The likelyhood of getting that much outside scholarship money is pretty remote. My D did get more than her first year’s COA when you combine outside scholarships and school scholarships, the overage was refunded to my DD to be applied towards next year’s expenses. Many of her outside scholarships were small local one time scholarships but because they all came the first year she had to pay tax on them. I can’t imagen that she’d get future scholarships that would exceed her COA for all four years but boy, that would be nice! If it did happen I imagen she would return the unused scholarship money if the school didn’t do it automatically.