<p>Colleges send out FA information to every accepted student, right? But obviously, not all of them attend. Where does all this money go? Do they just save it for next year, or do they redistribute it among attending students? Just curious :)</p>
<p>They know from years past how many will accept and how many will go elsewhere. That is taken into account in offering money. To be honest, they would NOT HAVE ENOUGH money if they had 100% yield. The number crunchers know how much money they have to offer, and what the likely yield is, and they send out offers accordingly. They allow for being perhaps 10% off.</p>
<p>A lot of colleges send out “preliminary” offers too that when they dont get their yield back they can then say “Okay, this is how much we really offer” after they get commitments. I know the James Madison, Wake Forest, and a couple of others do this from personal experience, and some others do too.</p>
<p>Where does the money go? That depends on the school. I know that at some schools, this money is used to award aid to transfer students who get their financial aid awards later. At other schools, the money just goes back into the general fund…it is NOT awarded to others. At some places…the schools do give additional awards to incoming students. YMMV by school.</p>
<p>Schools use models to guesstimate how many students will accept scholarships and FA. So, they offer more than what they can afford.</p>