Article

In assessing your financial need, we first look at your family’s particular income and assets in order to come up with a student and parent contribution based on your individual financial need. Any funds that you receive from an organization outside your family that are intended for your educational expenses would be considered outside awards. Since outside awards are additional resources that reduce your financial need, they cannot be used to replace your parent contribution (which was calculated based on your parents’ income and assets).

Here are some examples of outside awards:

• Funds from your secondary school
• Funds from city, state, or national organizations
• Funds from nonprofit organizations and businesses
• Funds from your parents’ employers
• Funds from government scholarships like ROTC

If the funds are meant to pay for your educational expenses, they are outside awards and will be incorporated into your financial aid package according to our outside award policy. You Harvard scholarship funding is not an outside award. Student wages, thesis grants, summer research grants, and other similar grants are not outside awards, since they are not directly meant to pay your standard cost of attendance. If you are receiving funding from an outside organization and are unclear of how to report it, please contact us and we’ll let you know.