Scholarships at the AFA?

thepetester

5-Year Member
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Mar 31, 2014
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Hi,

Someone in another thread mentioned that you could apply scholarships to the purchase of the uniforms, etc. Would these be local scholarships that you earned, the Pell grant, etc?

Just a little confused on what type of scholarship a person would be granted considering that tuition, room/board, etc is paid in full already at the academies.
 
Hi Petester,

There are some older threads with more details on this, but basically any scholarship that does not have "restrictions" on it can be used. Also, AFA cannot and will not provide reporting/tracking on scholarships, so if that is required then the scholarship cannot be used there.

There are thousands (literally) of big and small scholarships out there available. For example, let's say a young person gets a $300 scholarship from the local chapter of the Organic Bee Keeping Society. As long as that scholarship does not require it to be spent on certain expenses, nor that it be administered or reported on by AFA (who again is not set up to do that sort of thing), then it's fine to use for other expenses such as books, etc.

Hope that helps!
 
great, thanks for the information! My son will be looking into some of the church scholarships offered now!
 
Someone in another thread mentioned that you could apply scholarships to the purchase of the uniforms, etc. Would these be local scholarships that you earned, the Pell grant, etc?

If you/DS/DD has filed the FAFSA for other colleges, remember that the service academies are ineligible to participate in a student aid program under the Department of Education and do not accept any federal financial aid, including the Pell Grant. The military academies fall under the Department of Defense and are not within the IRS’ definition of eligible educational institutions.
 
Does anyone know the approximate amount of the cadet loan that covers the initial uniform/computer expenses? If a scholarship is awarded and exceeds the amount of this loan, and it has stipulations that it must be used for tuition, books, and other related educational expenses, what happens to the balance?
 
I can relate to you my son's experience, but it is several years old and the procedure may have changed. The Academy will provide guidance if your cadet is in this situation.

If the scholarship has ANY stipulations on what it can be used for, it will be rejected by the Academy. There is no tuition, room and board, or fees like at other schools so they will not deal with it. Out of my son's scholarships, there was only one that had no stipulations on what it could be used for so it was the only one that he got to keep. It was a $1000/yr. scholarship from my employer, paid out once a year. The check came to him made out to USAFA and my son, and he took it to the financial office at USAFA and they took the check. (I have heard that who the check is to be made out to has changed, but I cannot remember exactly what it is now. They will be able to tell your kid.)

The first year the check went to pay down his loan balance. (I believe the initial loan amount was $6800 then, it will be more now). The second year it also went to pay down the balance, and it actually paid the loan off, so my son started getting his full paycheck well before any of his classmates. The third and fourth year they took the check and the amount was added to my son's next paycheck so he more or less got the money directly.

Things may have changed a bit, but that was the general procedure. The staff at USAFA will help, like I said, but the biggest thing is that the scholarship contract can have no limits on how the money can be used.

Stealth_81
 
So it sounds like some investigating needs to be done before expending more precious time into scholly apps. Thx Stealth!

ETA: one application said "funds restricted for student academic and/or tuition expenses". Student academic expenses seems vague. Would the academy reject this scholarship due to the verbiage used (ie, the inclusion of the word "restricted"). I suppose a phone call from DS to USAFA might be the best bet.
 
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Update: no stipulations at all for USAFA to accept scholarship funds.
 
DS won a Leadership Scholarship from his HS ...it originally had a stipulation for tuition and books. When he got his Principal nomination, the Trust Scholarship committee lifted the stipulation and he was able to use it to pay for his uniforms and computer immediately etc.
 
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