Scholarships & Financial Aid

WillyWankaWannaB
Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:20:44 +0000

Correction to Lima’s post:

All students regardless of their financial aid status are considered for all of the merit scholarships. These scholarships are awarded to entering freshman even before the financial aid office reviews the FAFSA/CSS in most cases. If outside (non-fordham) scholarships are received, the merit scholarship is reduced by 1/2 the amount of the outside scholarship, and the remaining 1/2 of the outside scholarship the student can keep. I would think that any state/federal financial aid based award that a student qualifies in a given year would be applied on top of the merit scholarship the student receives from Fordham (probably up to a certain total award cap before the merit scholarship is reduced for that academic year), but I would recommend contacting the financial aid office in anycase.

There is no need based component to the Presidential/Jesuit or National Merit/Achievement/Hispanic Semifinalist scholarships. The student gets full tuition minus the fees with both of these catagories, but the Presidential/Jesuit also includes your dormitory fee.

The Deans Scholarship is a merit scholarship of $10k/yr. which can also have up to $12k/yr. in addition depending on the financial needs of the student for each year (meaning it will vary each yr. depending on the FAFSA/CSS). But, the student will get at least $10k/yr. regardless of need.

Then there are the other scholarships which have a lesser annual amount than the $10k/yr. Dean’s scholarship.

On top of all this, there are the “need based” financial aid awards (grant-in-aid, fordham tuition award, etc.) which are purely dependent upon the FAFSA/CSS and how much aid Fordham has for the upcoming year to distribute among the students that need it. Unfortunately, with the economy doing as bad as it is and college endowments significantly reduced with the market losses, I would be certain that this has to have had some negative impact on the amount of tuition assistance that Fordham is able to (and other colleges for that matter) supply to its students.

At least with the merit scholarships, the student is guaranteed that annual amount/yr. as long as he/she remains with the minimum required gpa.

Fordham has a very good page which explains the scholarships:
[Traditional Rose Hill and Lincoln Center Fordham University Aid](http://www.fordham.edu/Tuition__Financial_A/Undergraduate_Studen/Types_of_Financial_A/Traditional_Rose_Hil_2158.asp)