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Immaculata· Outside Scholarship Displacement

Will Immaculata Reduce Your Outside Scholarship?

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

Verified Jun 20264 days ago· COWORK

The rule at Immaculata

Cost-of-attendance cap

Immaculata only displaces institutional aid when the package would exceed COA. In plain dollar terms, that means an outside award only starts cutting institutional grant once the total package exceeds the COA worksheet.

catalog.immaculata.edu lists Associate Degree Grant as the baseline automatic award that any outside scholarship will sit on top of.

Source: https://catalog.immaculata.edu/undergraduate-catalog/expenses-payment-policy-and-financial-aid/immaculata-scholarships-and-grants/

The math: a $5,000 outside scholarship at Immaculata

  1. Setup

    Suppose you've stacked Immaculata's institutional merit + housing scholarship to a combined value within ~$5,000 of cost of attendance. You then win a $5,000 outside scholarship.

  2. What Immaculata does

    Because total aid would exceed cost of attendance, Immaculata reduces its institutional contribution by the amount that pushes you over. The outside award fills the cap, not the family wallet.

  3. Family takeaway

    For the highest-merit students at COA-cap schools, outside scholarships can mathematically displace institutional aid once the package is near full-COA. Run the cap math before applying.

Schools with the same policy

These schools also use cost-of-attendance cap for outside scholarships. The same dollar math above applies at each.

Schools that handle this differently

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

When this rule bites hardest

  • Assuming outside/private scholarships stack freely on top of Immaculata aid.

    The catalog requires students to report all outside aid and states it 'may impact the student's eligibility and/or institutional funding amounts.' Institutional aid combined with outside tuition-only resources cannot exceed full-time annual tuition, so large outside scholarships can reduce your IU scholarship.

  • Expecting to keep an IU merit scholarship on top of employee or veteran tuition benefits.

    The catalog states tuition benefit and veterans benefit awards 'will supersede and replace any IU merit/need scholarship or Institutional grant aid applied towards tuition charges only' — they displace, not stack.

Displacement questions families ask

Do outside scholarships reduce my Immaculata aid?
They can. You must report all outside aid, which 'may impact the student's eligibility and/or institutional funding amounts,' and your institutional aid combined with outside tuition-only resources cannot exceed full-time annual tuition ($29,550 for 2026-27). Ask the aid office exactly which award is reduced first.

Rules that bite at Immaculata

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

  • renewalCentennial Scholarship: renewal floor that quietly knocks awards out

    This academic merit scholarship can be attained for an additional three consecutive years of full-time undergraduate enrollment at Immaculata. Students must maintain the required GPA for the scholarship to be renewed each year (the specific GPA is not published on the page). A single rough term can end a four-year award here without warning if the GPA floor isn't met cumulatively.

Aid-office script (copy & send)

The displacement rule is only binding when it's in writing. This script asks Immaculata's aid office the specific question that matters for cost-of-attendance cap.

Subject: Outside-scholarship treatment question, fall applicant

Dear Immaculata 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://catalog.immaculata.edu/undergraduate-catalog/expenses-payment-policy-and-financial-aid/immaculata-scholarships-and-grants/.

If my package is institutional merit + Pell + a $5,000 outside scholarship and the total stays under the COA worksheet, can you confirm no institutional dollar is reduced?

If the same outside award pushes the total over COA by $X, which aid line item shrinks first: institutional grant, loan, or work-study?

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 Immaculata compares across our verified dataset

  • 160 of 751 verified schools in our dataset use cost-of-attendance cap displacement.

    Immaculata is in a recognizable cluster (160 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.

    Immaculata 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 Immaculata’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

More on Immaculata merit aid