Your scholarship funding primer

Scholarship funding is a big focus for admitted students around this time of year. I’ve written recently about the importance of working on a broad-based financial plan, and most applicants hope that scholarship funding will make up as large a part of that plan as possible. Each year the release of admissions decisions triggers a huge number of requests for scholarship reconsideration and increased funding, so it seems worthwhile to dig into our process a bit to answer some of the most common questions our office receives.

Every admitted candidate of course wants the maximum possible amount of scholarship funds, leading many to approach the scholarship process as a negotiation. If some candidates are “vacating” their awards by declining their offer of admission, the hope is that those funds can be re-allocated. While we indeed will always allocate all available funds, the catch here is that our model accounts for the fact that not all admitted candidates will enroll, meaning that the amount of scholarship funding offered considerably exceeds the real dollars available in our budget. The ebb and flow of the admitted candidate pool during the enrollment process does indeed sometimes result in real additional funds becoming available, though this overwhelmingly happens in quite small amounts that aren’t likely to have a major impact on candidates’ broader financial circumstances. We’re also not able to do this until closer to the end of the enrollment process when we have a much clearer sense of where we stand.

All this means that candidates should be making their larger financial plans with the scholarship information they currently have, while keeping in mind a few bits of important detail. The first is that Fletcher scholarship awards are guaranteed and renewable for a second year of study (outside of one-year degree programs), so all candidates have a total dollar amount for the duration of their Fletcher studies upon which they can rely and plan around. And, while it may seem obvious, it’s important to pay attention not just to the raw dollar amount of a scholarship award but the relative percentage of tuition costs it covers. Many candidates have offers of admission from several institutions, and not all of them are likely to have identical costs of attendance.

Putting together a financial plan requires a great deal of effort and sacrifice, and we will likewise work hard to be sure that candidates receive every available scholarship dollar to support those efforts!