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STU (Miami)· Scholarship Stacking

Stacking Outside Scholarships at STU (Miami)

How STU (Miami) treats outside scholarships when they arrive on top of institutional merit aid.

Verified Jun 20264 days ago· COWORK

The verdict

Mixed displacement

At STU (Miami), 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.

Stacking policy at STU (Miami)

Institutional awards do not stack: 'Recipients of multiple institutional awards, including tuition discounts, are eligible to receive the highest individual award only,' and the Catholic HS/Dual Enrollment award explicitly cannot combine with other academic scholarships. STU also reserves the right to adjust university-funded scholarships when additional federal, state, or private funding arrives — so outside money can shrink the institutional award.

Scholarships are for traditional full-time undergrads (fall/spring) and can be used toward tuition, fees, or housing and meal plans. The Bright Futures top-up is explicitly last-dollar against tuition.

Source: https://www.stu.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/

Common stacking mistakes

  • Expecting outside or extra state money to stack on top of the full package.

    STU 'reserves the right to review and adjust original financial aid award packages, including university-funded scholarships and/or grants received as additional funding from federal, state, or private source.'

Rules that bite at STU (Miami)

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

  • renewalSTU Bright Futures: renewal floor that quietly knocks awards out

    Renewable up to four years of full-time undergraduate study with good academic standing at STU and with the Bright Futures program. 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

    STU (Miami) 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 STU (Miami)'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 STU (Miami) 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.stu.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/.

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 STU (Miami) compares across our verified dataset

  • 86 of 751 verified schools in our dataset use mixed displacement.

    STU (Miami) 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.

    STU (Miami) 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 STU (Miami)’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

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