Some colleges like Harvard and Princeton turned down these funds, which were doled out more heavily to colleges based on the number of Pell grant recipients they had. The University of California at Berkeley, which says it got a $15.2 million chunk of the emergency financial aid grants, gives students who need more than $500 (and didn’t get more than $1,000 in refunds on campus housing) a grant of $1,300 if the expected family contribution is zero and $500 if the expected family contribution is more than $10,000.
These were first-come, first-served grants, however. In many cases, they have likely been exhausted already, and according to the schools’ required disclosures, it’s likely a lot of eligible kids got left out in the cold. Oklahoma State University, for example, reported that it used up its entire $8.38 million allotment by July 20, and said on its website that only 5,061 students out of a possible 16,200 received funds. By August 18, Texas A&M had distributed $19.8 million of a $19.9 million grant—to only some 15,000 at College Station out of some 40,000 eligible recipients, according to the university’s disclosure.
The University of Texas at Austin said it had $1.6 million left to distribute out of the approximately $15.7 million it received in CARES grant funds. "We received applications for, and distributed, the majority of these CARES Act grant funds during the Spring 2020 semester over the course of approximately two weeks," the financial aid office said in its e-mail.
Every school is different, however. The University of Massachusetts at Boston, for example, said its total grant allocation was around $6.1 million, and only $2.6 million had been distributed by August 10, going to 3,663 students so far out of 13,300 eligible.
Some students simply got turned down. Coval says that’s likely because the Department of Education guidelines for the money stressed Covid disruption, not explicit family need, so families likely had to show that it was the pandemic that put them in dire financial straits.
Snowflake
Like the picture of Dorian Gray, a student’s financial picture is likely always changing, and it’s become critical to communicate with financial aid offices, especially in October of this year, says Messinger. Almost as soon as families file their FAFSA forms, they are going to want to immediately hit the financial aid offices at the schools they covet the most and explain that the family’s financial picture has changed, and that their current forms don’t reflect any current reality whatsoever.
Messinger, who coaches families and other advisors on college funding, says people are always leaving money on the table when it comes to education, missing sources of college aid and seldom realizing that every student is unique and has unique college aid advantages. Some schools want you for your academic success. Some want you because they know you’re in need.
“You are a snowflake in how the school looks at you," he says. Each student is unique, in other words, and each school is unique in its funding mechanisms. “Some schools award you based on [demonstrating] your financial need. If you’re high-income, you’re going to pay full price. … But we’ve seen kids go to Georgetown and UPenn for less than a state school" because those schools could meet 100% of the student's need.
"High income families would be expected to pay full price there simply because of how the formula works and how they run their business," he says. But other schools, on the other hand, might offer these same students generous scholarships that are based more on merit.