One of my more serious articles on how to earn a college degree as cheaply as possibly is the one that brings about one-fourth of you to this blog. The article, Cheap College Degrees: Save money on an accredited degree, has been up for some time over at the Adult Education part of About.com.
One of the things that I mention in the article is that getting scholarships does not always help you. When you complete your FAFSA, your intended school looks at it to determine how much scholarship money you might be get. It also looks at any scholarships you have earned from outside the school. However - and this is key - you are only going to get as much in scholarship money as the school believes you should.
Here's an example: When I was an undergrad, I received about $8000 in scholarship money. That seemed good to me. At the last minute, I qualified for an additional $1000 scholarship. Now, being rather good at math, I figured I should then get $9000.
Nope.
I got $8000. Why? Because most of that $8000 was university scholarships. My getting an outside scholarship for $1000 meant that they could and would give me $1000 less. The university gave me $7000.
There are three exceptions to this:
1. If you end up at a school that either has a small endowment fund or is student-loan happy (which can make things even worse); and/or
2. You qualify for a lot of grants and don't get scholarships; and/or
3. You get scholarships that equal 100% of the cost of tuition.
Otherwise, you get what you get.
