What to use?

scmom12
Sat, 29 Jun 2013 19:01:20 +0000

^^I would say that usually schools assume that the work study portion will give you spending money for miscellaneous stuff - how you spend that is up to you.

With regard to “losing aid” it simply is that schools want to give aid to as many students as possible. When you have scholarships/aid flowing through school totaling more than COA, the school will scale back on some of it to max you out at COA figure (different for each school). In our case, they cut back on state scholarship aid first. Really, if your total is at the COA you should have enough money to come out even unless you have really high travel costs. If you pick cheapest housing choice and less expensive meal plan, you may get back enough in overage to have a cushion.

You may need to talk with financial aid department at your school. Some of this may vary from school to school.