Usually you have to be pretty frugal. The school might be able to get you slightly more by having you fill out forms on how much your rent/other bills they deem as “necessary living expenses,” but they are bound by federal guidelines that won’t let them allow you to borrow much more than what they have listed as tuition + fees and living expenses. Usually even if you get scholarships, they deduct that from the total amount allowed and won’t let you get additional funds on top of that. If it is an outside scholarship, you are required to report that and it’s the same situation.
Depending on the state, there are laws regarding that sort of thing. Some landlords won't allow it because it would require opening some sort of escrow account, with any and all interest earned on prepaid rent made payable to the tenant. It's just more trouble than it's worth sometimes. It happened to me a while back.
