Another GI Bill Question

[AnotherLawyer]

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Greetings,

Has anyone had success convincing a school to convert a scholarship offer to a stipend in order to maximize the value of the post-9/11 GI Bill?

For example: Assume in-state tuition is 30k, fully covered by the GI Bill (at least for 36 months). And then you receive a 10k scholarship. Do you think the school would be willing to restructure this so I'm paying the full 30k tuition via the GI Bill, but get 10k cash as a stipend?

As far as I can tell, the cost to the school is the same.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[IlDestriero]

Can’t hurt to ask.


--
Il Destriero

 

[pgg]

Greetings,

Has anyone had success convincing a school to convert a scholarship offer to a stipend in order to maximize the value of the post-9/11 GI Bill?

For example: Assume in-state tuition is 30k, fully covered by the GI Bill (at least for 36 months). And then you receive a 10k scholarship. Do you think the school would be willing to restructure this so I'm paying the full 30k tuition via the GI Bill, but get 10k cash as a stipend?

As far as I can tell, the cost to the school is the same.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

They probably won't give it to you as cash. But it doesn't really matter ... if the student lives on campus and gets housing and meal plan billed to the student's account, there'll be non-tuition expenses to soak up the scholarship money.

$10K scholarship goes to the student's account. GI Bill pays the $30K tuition directly to the school. Housing might be $6K. Account winds up with a $4K credit that carries over to the next term ... maybe a summer session the GI Bill isn't covering.

The GI Bill housing allowance and book stipend goes to the student's checking account, of course.

 

[pgg]

One thing I learned this semester is that the schools themselves are ... creative with the accounting.

My kid goes to a private school, about $40K tuition per year.

The school does the Yellow Ribbon program and covers another $5K per semester.

My kid got about $8K in grants and scholarships from the school.

The GI Bill is capped at about $23K per academic year for private schools.

So $23K + $10K + $8K = $41K ... he's covered.

But they didn't do this:
Fall - $11.5K GI Bill + $5K yellow ribbon + $4K school scholarship
Spring - $11.5K GI Bill + $5K yellow ribbon + $4K school scholarship

They did this:
Fall - $20K GI Bill + $0.5K school scholarship
Spring - $3K GI Bill + $10K yellow ribbon + $7.5K school scholarship

I.e. they structure the billing so they get the government money up front, just in case the student quits before the spring semester.