Stacking -- cutting into EFC

[Mom2aphysicsgeek]

@Momto2girls I don’t remember which poster initially wrote the magical unicorn comment, but I commented on their post quoting their use of it. I don’t think they meant it offensively. I know I didn’t. I know why they used it and I was attempting to expand on their thoughts and explain why they posted that wording.

Many parents when they first start this process are under the illusion that if their child gets merit scholarships, especially outside scholarships, that they will reduce their parental contribution. And while that may be true in certain circumstances (for example, at schools not providing institutional grant $$), it certainly isn’t true across the board. It definitely isn’t true at most meets need schools or schools that are offering institutional grants. The vast majority of elites will not allow any reduction in parental contribution (unless the student is full pay and not receiving any grant $$). Here is an example from Brown’s website:

Q. What happens if I receive an outside scholarship?

A. Outside scholarships and employer tuition benefits are an excellent way to help reduce the need to work and/or borrow student loans while at Brown. When you receive an outside scholarship, our office is required to reevaluate your financial aid award and account for the additional resource.

Outside scholarships can be used to reduce the entire amount of student effort. Student effort includes campus employment, student loans, and the standard summer earnings expectation. Federal regulations stipulate that outside scholarships cannot be used to replace the Parent Contribution or any additional Student Contribution derived from student assets.

This policy does not apply to entitlement awards (State Scholarships, Pell Grants and Federal SEOG). Receipt of these funds will result in dollar for dollar reduction in University Scholarship

If your outside scholarships exceed your student effort, your Brown University Scholarship will be reduced, in which case you may wish to consider taking advantage of the Brown Computer Purchase Program. More information about Outside Scholarships and the Computer Purchase Program is available in our Frequently Asked Questions.

The only way I know of for parental contribution to be reduced is by university sponsored merit scholarships stacking on top of additional university sponsored merit scholarships without any need-based aid involved (with the exception of Pell and SEOG as @mom2collegekids pointed out in her post and Brown stipulates in their quote.)

There are a handful of very large scholarships at top schools: Robertson at Duke and UNC, Jefferson at UVA, Stamps at various schools across the country, etc. Those scholarships are going to be awarded to extremely high-achieving kids who are tippy top school competitive.

If you go down in rankings, the likelihood of large $$ awards goes up for top students. But it will take merit on merit, not merit on institutional grants, to typically make that happen. Fwiw, a far more common scenario for MC families at higher ranked schools is for them to offer a decently large dollar scholarship that is smaller than pure grant award and then add a smaller amt of instutional grant $$ on top of the scholarship. But, there is not much opportunity to reduce parental contribution that way.