Scholarships

Private scholarships can actually reduce parts of your child's financial aid package. How? Colleges must consider outside scholarships as a student's financial resource, available to pay for education costs. If a college financial aid office meets your child's full financial need, government regulations specify that any scholarship money won lowers the need figure on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

What should matter to you and your child is which types of aid are reduced or eliminated—self-help aid (loans or work-study) or need-based grants. Colleges, following federal regulations, can adjust aid packages in a variety of ways—some will subtract the value of unmet need first, others will reduce self-help aid before reducing grants, still others will use scholarship funds only to replace grant money. Some colleges even give the option of using scholarships to reduce the expected family contribution.

It's a good idea to contact the financial aid office of colleges that interest your child and inquire about their policies regarding outside scholarships.

 

 

There's a lot of advice out there about the best way to apply for scholarships—how your child should "package" himself in his essay, which extracurricular activities to emphasize, and what color paper to use for his resume. The truth is, much of this advice can vary widely, depending on the author—and what works for one applicant may not necessarily work for another.

Your child will discover that most of the scholarship secrets simply boil down to using common sense and following directions carefully.