Merit scholarship replacing need based

[enthepassant]

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Hey guys I would really appreciate anyone's opinion. So my family isn't that well off (EFC = 0) and so I usually get the max amount of need based scholarship. Well one day I received a 40K merit scholarship from a state school no less and I'm like omg waah no debt going here!

However, when I got my financial aid back I was underwhelmed. True, it was cheaper than having not received the scholarship but it was clear that they'd use my merit scholarship to replace some of my need based. I lost about 12-15k of need based to be replaced by the scholarship. Oh and btw these numbers are the total sum for over a period of 4 years.

Anyhow, has anyone been in this situation as well? I'm pretty POed although I guess it's my fault for not researching this more. But I had always taken for granted that merit scholarships were used to replace loans.

 

[schrizto]

Yeah, merit scholarships are taken into consideration when awarding need-based aid. With an EFC of 0, you'd probably have gotten all the aid you need at one of those "expensive" top private schools. State schools usually aren't known for their fantastic need-based aid.

 

[apumic]

If this is for med school, you should be incurring debt. Very rarely does anyone go to medical school anywhere near debt-free. For UG, you should still expect some (albeit quite a bit less) debt. It's a👎 (unfortunate) part of college, but it's a rare student in deed who can manage without incurring any debt whatsoever. It sounds like you've gotten a great scholarship, so run w/ it.

 

[Mattabet]

👍 Right. I'm in the same kind of boat (the cheaper one, not a 40K one 🙂), and that's just how this process works. You'll take on debt because in the long run you can afford it in ways that a generic non-medical student can't. You probably couldn't have done much to finesse the numbers in such a way that you get to keep a bunch of free money anyway, at least not ethically.

 

[enthepassant]

Thanks for all the answers. I guess I got greedy expecting to get public school tuition + maximum need based + the full 40k scholarship. Sigh I wish I knew this beforehand because I declined an acceptance at a higher rated state school and I'm not sure if I'd have done the move saving ~30K instead of ~40K. Ah well, it's a good lesson for anyone else out there to realize that merit scholarships can be deceiving for anyone with high amounts of need based scholarship. Oh and yea this is for medical school if I didn't make it clear in the original post.