I’m not sure if it varies from school to school…

But, at my school, when a student receives an outside scholarship, they reduce the loans first, and then work study. The money that we earn from work study is not used to pay off tuition, but it’s spending money(travel, books, etc.)

Say the school said that the total expenses for the year was $10, 000. From FAFSA and CSS, they say that my total need was $2000. Instead of just giving it to me or taking out a loan, I will earn that money by working. If I then receive an outside scholarship of $1500, then they reduce the amount of money that I have to make from working to $500, and I will get the $1500 scholarship money instead of working for it.

If with your scholarships you receive all that the school says that you need, you will no longer be eligible for federal work study. But some schools do allow for students not on financial aid to have jobs on campus, just that it is ALL taxed. What I earn from work study is not taxed as long as I don’t exceed the amount that I am supposed to make in a year/semester (if I do, I would then exceed my “need amount”). If I do exceed it, I am just taxed for it (if I go $50 over what I demonstrate as “need,” I am only taxed on those $50).

Once again, I’m not sure if it works the same at all colleges and universities.

For the most part, depending on your school’s Cost of Attendance and your Expected Family Contribution, most schools will reduce your work-study award before they take away any grant money. In general, no, your work-study reduction for fall would not be credited to your spring eligibility, since eligibility is looked at for the total year. However, if you were also offered a loan, the loan may be reduced before the work study, so if you are also relying on the loan funds for part of your bill or books you need to watch this carefully. I suspect that this is what the aid officer told you, but perhaps not clearly.

As for how work study earnings is paid, that depends on the payroll cycle at your school. Usually it is paid to you, as a paycheck, every week or every other week, depending on how other employees are paid. Since you must work in order to receive these funds you don’t get paid if you don’t work and some schools will only give you a certain amount of time to get into a job before taking the money and awarding it to someone else. Please remember that work study earnings are TAXABLE INCOME. This means that you must take it into consideration in determining whether or not you are required to file state and federal taxes for 2007, and filling out your W-4 incorrectly (don’t indicate you are exempt if you worked enough before school starts to need to have taxes withheld) can cost you when you file your returns. However, the amount on the W-2 from your workstudy can be included on Worksheet C of your 2008-2009 FAFSA, but not other wages.

Im really not sure to be honest. However, I think all your money from everywhere will go into your account and any money left over after the bill will be refunded to you. This helps to pay for your daily living expenses while in school. Hope this helps.

my guess is that your scholarship aid will be reduced by whatever work-study dollars you contribute

in other words you won’t see a penny of it, which is why they were obscure in their answers (the fewer scholarship dollars you use the more is available for other needy students)