What is scholarship stacking?

By Anne Weber

There’s a term in higher education that people may use when talking about financial aid: scholarship stacking. 

Scholarship stacking refers to the ability to layer or add up aid, grants, and scholarships from multiple sources. The idea is that a student might be able to secure funding from different buckets–perhaps need-based financial aid, institutional merit money, or even private scholarships. Even within those broad buckets, there might be “sub-buckets”, things like departmental scholarships, housing stipends, etc. 

But here’s the catch: not all colleges allow scholarship stacking. In very simple terms, if a college doesn’t allow stacking, they simply reduce aid or scholarships from one bucket when another source is made available. 

At College Inside Track, we counsel our families to focus on finding colleges that offer the best financial fit. Often, we guide students to schools where we can predict they could be in demand and, therefore, secure merit money. 

In contrast, we caution families against chasing those small, non-renewable scholarships that could be awarded by private sources. Not only are private scholarships generally smaller awards compared to institutional offerings, but they are also a lot of work for what’s usually not much reward. 

If a college does allow stacking, then those small awards can be the icing on the cake. However, even if a college does scholarship stacking, few, if any, schools allow grants, aid, and scholarships to exceed the cost of attendance. But if a college doesn’t allow stacking, those private awards can be deducted from the merit money being offered, and in subsequent years, the student is unlikely to see them return. 

The only way to know if a college allows scholarship stacking is to verify with the financial aid office. This is a year-by-year, school-by-school policy. But with so much at stake, it’s worth the extra effort to verify a college’s policy before counting on financial resources that might not stack up.