If I win an outside scholarship, does it stack with my Dillard award?

Not necessarily. Dillard requires recipients to pursue and report outside scholarships, and reserves the right to swap an institutional award for an external one of the same amount when it covers the same costs. Total aid also cannot exceed the Cost of Attendance. Ask the aid office exactly how a specific outside award will affect your package.

Dillard· Scholarship Stacking

Stacking Outside Scholarships at Dillard

How Dillard treats outside scholarships when they arrive on top of institutional merit aid.

Verified Jun 20268 days ago· CC

The verdict

Mixed displacement

At Dillard, an outside scholarship is treated category-by-category, where some aid stacks and some displaces. The strategy follows from that: the answer depends on which aid category the outside award lands against, so get the order in writing.

dillard.edu publishes the $44,420 cost-of-attendance worksheet the math is run against.

Stacking policy at Dillard

Dillard's Scholarship/Grant Agreement reserves the right to SWAP an institutional award for an outside (external) scholarship when the external award covers the same costs — a same-amount replacement, not additive stacking. All recipients are required to pursue outside scholarships and must report them; total aid cannot exceed Cost of Attendance.

Two reinforcing clauses: (1) 'If you are awarded an external scholarship, the university may switch your external scholarship award with the amount of the institutional scholarship when the external scholarship covers the same costs as the University's institutional award.' (2) 'Dillard University reserves the right to replace institutional awards with other sources (external scholarships, TOPS, grants, etc.) in the same amount in order to use limited resources to support the needs of all students.' A federal over-award cap also applies: 'it is a federal requirement that awards cannot exceed the university's total Cost of Attendance (COA).' Net effect: an outside scholarship often substitutes for (does not add to) institutional merit dollars when it covers the same direct cost — labeled 'mixed' because the swap is at the university's discretion and triggered by overlapping cost coverage / the COA cap rather than a single fixed displacement order.

Source: https://www.dillard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/scholarshipagreementform.pdf

Common stacking mistakes

Expecting an outside scholarship to add on top of the Dillard merit award.
Per the Scholarship/Grant Agreement, the university may SWAP your institutional award for an external one of the same amount when it covers the same costs, and total aid cannot exceed the Cost of Attendance — so winning an outside award often replaces, rather than increases, your Dillard dollars.

Stacking questions families ask

If I win an outside scholarship, does it stack with my Dillard award?: Not necessarily. Dillard requires recipients to pursue and report outside scholarships, and reserves the right to swap an institutional award for an external one of the same amount when it covers the same costs. Total aid also cannot exceed the Cost of Attendance. Ask the aid office exactly how a specific outside award will affect your package.

Rules that bite at Dillard

The trip wires we'd flag in a custom playbook. Each is derived from Dillard's own published policy, not generic advice.

renewalUniversity Scholarship: renewal floor that quietly knocks awards out
Scholarship/Grant Agreement lists University Scholarship renewal as 3.5 GPA / 24 hrs.: 'University Scholarship (3.5/24 hrs.)' — maintain that cumulative GPA at the end of each spring term and earn at least 24 semester hours per year. Supports up to eight semesters. A single rough term can end a four-year award here without warning if the GPA floor isn't met cumulatively.
displacementDifferent aid types are displaced differently
Dillard treats loans, work-study, and institutional grant under different rules. The same $5,000 outside award can land against any of them depending on category.

Aid-office script (copy & send)

A binding written answer beats a verbal hallway promise. This script is keyed to Dillard's published displacement type. Paste it, fill in your name, and send it before you accept an outside award.

Subject: Outside-scholarship treatment question, fall applicant

Dear Dillard Financial Aid Office,

I'm a fall applicant reviewing how outside scholarships interact with my institutional aid package. I've read the public policy at https://www.dillard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/scholarshipagreementform.pdf and the $44,420 cost-of-attendance worksheet.

Which institutional aid types are protected from outside-award displacement, and which can be reduced?

Is the displacement order published anywhere internally, even if not on the public site? Families need this to compare schools.

A written answer (email is fine) is important because the outside-scholarship awarding bodies want confirmation before disbursing. Thank you for the time.

— [Student name], [Application ID if available]

How Dillard compares across our verified dataset

86 of 751 verified schools in our dataset use mixed displacement.
Dillard is in the modest minority (86 schools share this category). That framing matters when comparing peer schools that may publish the policy differently or not at all.
669 of 751 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
Dillard is one of them. The cohort minority (82 schools) only awards one-year scholarships, which means the four-year value families assume on a brochure quote isn't guaranteed at every school.

Sources used on this page

Every claim is checked against Dillard’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.