Your plan and costs

The form first asks where you are enrolling or enrolled, what your status there is, what you are studying, and how many years you have left. Then it asks for five figures.

Every one of them is an estimate. Nobody expects you to have these to the dollar, and you do not upload anything to support them at this stage.

The five figures

You enter these. The form works out what is left to cover, so you do not have to do the subtraction yourself.

One year of costs. Tuition, fees, housing, food, books, and travel, for one year. If your school publishes a cost of attendance, use it. If it does not, add up what you actually expect to spend.

Grants and scholarships. Money you do not repay, from your school, your government, or another foundation, whether or not it has been confirmed yet.

Loans. What you expect to borrow for this year, including loans a parent takes out for you.

Family contribution. What your family can actually put in this year, not what a form says they should be able to.

Your own earnings. What you expect to earn and put toward this year.

After the five figures the form asks what other scholarships you have applied for or received, and leaves a notes field for anything the numbers do not say.

An example

The figures below are invented to show the shape of an answer. They are not a typical cost, not a typical aid package, and not a figure to measure your own against.

In this example the year leaves $6,600 to cover and the award is $5,000, so the award does not close the gap on its own. That is ordinary, and it is not a reason to leave the page blank. What we are reading for is what closing most of a gap would let you do.

If you do not receive this scholarship

The form asks what will most likely happen if you do not receive this scholarship. You pick the answer closest to the truth from a short list, and the notes field is there if none of them fits.

There is no answer that counts against you. Borrowing more, working more hours, taking fewer courses, starting somewhere cheaper, deferring a year, and not going at all are all real answers, and we have read all of them. Tell us the one that is actually yours.

This question carries weight. We select students for whom the award changes what happens next, and this is where you tell us what it would change.

How to answer honestly

Do not round your costs up, and do not round what you already have down. A large gap is not what we are selecting for.

If you do not know a figure, estimate it and say so in the notes. An estimate with a sentence beside it tells us something. A blank tells us nothing.

If a figure changes after you submit, write to scholarship@lu-memorial.org and say so. Nobody is penalised for a number that moved.

What we ask you to show

We do not ask anyone for a document while we read applications. If you become a finalist, we ask for one document that supports what you told us about your costs. Any one of these works: an aid award letter, a funding or assistantship offer letter, a FAFSA Submission Summary, a bursar or financial aid office letter, a meal-eligibility letter, a counselor letter, or a signed statement from a school official or employer.

One staff member at the Goal Get It! Lu Office of Financial Aid reads that document. The selection committee does not see it.

We never ask you for tax returns, bank statements, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, or other government identification numbers.

What the application asks about your household and your circumstances, and what happens to those answers, is set out in what we ask, and why.