Can I combine Covenant scholarships?

It depends. The Wilberforce Scholarship is 'stackable with other aid up to the cost of tuition.' The Maclellan full-tuition scholarship is 'mutually exclusive with other institutional aid' — it replaces, rather than stacks with, your automatic merit award.

Covenant College· Outside Scholarship Displacement

Will Covenant College Reduce Your Outside Scholarship?

When you win a private scholarship, who actually keeps the money: your family, or the school?

Verified Jun 20268 days ago· CC

The rule at Covenant College

Mixed displacement

Covenant College displaces some aid categories but not others. In plain dollar terms, that means one $5,000 outside award might land against loans, work-study, or institutional grant depending on the category, so outcomes vary.

covenant.edu publishes the $64,450 cost-of-attendance worksheet the math is run against.

Source: https://covenant.edu/admissions/costs/aid.html

The math: a $5,000 outside scholarship at Covenant College

Setup
Covenant College treats different aid types differently. You receive institutional merit + need-based grant + a federal loan offer, then win a $5,000 outside scholarship.
What Covenant College does
Some categories reduce first; others stack. Without writing to the aid office, you cannot predict whether the $5,000 cuts loans, work-study, or institutional aid.
Family takeaway
Mixed-displacement schools require a written aid-office answer for each award size. Don't assume the answer matches a peer school.

Schools with the same policy

These schools also use mixed displacement for outside scholarships. The same dollar math above applies at each.

Schools that handle this differently

If Covenant College’s policy concerns you, these schools treat outside scholarships under a different rule.

When this rule bites hardest

Assuming the Maclellan full-tuition scholarship stacks on top of your automatic merit scholarship.
'The Maclellan Scholarship is mutually exclusive with other institutional aid.' It replaces your Founders'/Tower/etc. award rather than adding to it, so the marginal value over a large automatic tier is smaller than the full-tuition figure suggests.
Expecting the Wilberforce $15,000 to push your aid above tuition.
Wilberforce is 'stackable with other aid up to the cost of tuition' and the funds are 'not to exceed the cost of tuition.' If your other institutional aid already approaches tuition, Wilberforce dollars can be capped.
Budgeting only to the $44,050 tuition figure.
The 2026-27 on-campus cost-of-attendance budget total is $64,450 (tuition $44,050 + student fee $1,328 + living/housing & food $13,770 + books $1,170 + miscellaneous/personal $3,132 + transportation $920 + average loan fees $80). Merit scholarships are quoted against tuition, not the full cost of attendance.

Displacement questions families ask

Can I combine Covenant scholarships?: It depends. The Wilberforce Scholarship is 'stackable with other aid up to the cost of tuition.' The Maclellan full-tuition scholarship is 'mutually exclusive with other institutional aid' — it replaces, rather than stacks with, your automatic merit award.

Rules that bite at Covenant College

Trip wires derived from Covenant College's own published policy. These are the things a custom playbook would flag in the first pass.

displacementDifferent aid types are displaced differently
Covenant College 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)

The displacement rule is only binding when it's in writing. This script asks Covenant College's aid office the specific question that matters for mixed displacement.

Subject: Outside-scholarship treatment question, fall applicant

Dear Covenant College 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://covenant.edu/admissions/costs/aid.html and the $64,450 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 Covenant College compares across our verified dataset

86 of 751 verified schools in our dataset use mixed displacement.
Covenant College 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.
Covenant College 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 Covenant College’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.