Can you apply/use financial aid and scholarships at the same time?

Question

My dad always told me not to apply for financial aid (like FAFSA) because then I wouldn't be eligible for scholarships. Is this true? I want to know because I should really start applying soon because I'm a senior now.....and I'll be applying to colleges VERY soon.

Answer 1

FAFSA is where you get easy grants, scholarships and loans. I think every college student should know this. You can always apply to scholarships anytime regardless of whether you applied to FAFSA or not.

Answer 2

Your dad is an idiot.  Why would you NOT apply for free money through FAFSA?  Scholarships are "financial aid" and  yes, you can get all forms of financial aid (grants, loans, work study through fafsa as well as scholarships at the same time).

Fafsa is an application for FREE money, so if he doesn't want you to apply because HE is going to pay for it then let him.

Answer 3

No, he's wrong.

Answer 4

You should always apply for financial aid also. I mean, what if you don't get enough scholarships? You need extra money to pay for your college then.  

Answer 5

nope scholarships are based wholly on merit, not need.  your loans will be for what's not covered in scholarship.  so fill out your fafsa.

Answer 6

No, that is not true at all, your father is wrong.  In my first year of college, for example, I qualified for over ten thousand dollars' worth of financial aid (actually, closer to twenty thousand dollars), and I still used $3500 of merit scholarships on top of the financial aid that I received.  

Here's the funky part, though: every school has its own policy when it comes to combining financial aid and merit-based scholarships.  A lot of schools just let you add the two together (that's the best case scenario).  Some schools will do some kind of complicated averaging calculation to readjust your financial aid depending on what kinds of scholarships you get.  For example, you might get $10000 of financial aid originally, then get $5000 of scholarships, so then your financial aid might go down to $8000, so you'd have $5000+$8000 of total money.  Finally, the worst case scenario (and what happened with my school, unfortunately) is that money from scholarships is subtracted from your financial aid.  For example, say you had $16000 of financial aid and $5000 of scholarships.  Then your financial aid would get reduced to $11000.  When added to your scholarship money, it'd still be $16000, so you might as well have never gotten that scholarship.  Of course, if you get enough scholarship money to completely outstrip the financial aid, then you don't get any financial aid, but you get to keep all of your scholarship money.  However, schools like this usually come with some kind of threshold amount.  For example, my school's amount was $3700, so I got to keep anything less than that without affecting my financial aid package.

So, moral of the story is that you should DEFINITELY apply for financial aid because it cannot possibly hurt the amount of money that you receive to help pay for college.  It can only help you, I promise.  

Answer 7

I'm a second year college student, and I do not understand your father's reasoning. I did the FAFSA, got a Pell grant, and still received several scholarships from my college and other sources.

Really don't see why your dad would think the FAFSA renders you ineligible for scholarships. I would suggest asking your dad why he thinks that.  

Answer 8

You can try to go to

http://all-about-scholarship.com

it's about scholarships information.

Good luck