Financial Aid 'Award' - Loans after potential scholarship?

[Piglet2020]

I received my financial aid package, which offers ~50k in federal loans to cover COA. I don't see myself spending 2k on transportation, insurance, etc, so I probably wont take over 30k in loans. I have ~3 months to accept/decline this award.

What I'm worried about is how merit scholarships play a role. Say for instance I'm lucky enough to get a 10k scholarship, which means I only need to take out 20k in loans. 1) Could you "refund" a part of the loan once you already accepted the school's financial aid package? 2) How likely are students in a class of 150 to receive some sort of merit scholarship from their in-state school? 3) When do schools generally stop giving out merit scholarships?

I don't see myself getting a merit scholarship since my stats match the average matriculants' stats but one can only hope.

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[tiramisucheese]

If these are federal loans, you have 120 days after disbursement of funds to give back any money that you deem unnecessary.

 

[IlDestriero]

What a great award. They make it sound like they’re doing you a favor.
You can get federal loans for the whole wad! Awesome! Thanks for nothing! What happens if you don’t “accept their award”? You can’t get the loans?
Every school is going to have different amounts of funds to allocate to scholarships. Some are mostly need based, others have a lot more merit based funds allocated to attract the students they want.
Good luck. And good luck carving 20k off your living expenses. Every dollar you save on loans is $2 in your pocket down the line.


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Il Destriero