External Resources

Students must notify the Office of Financial Aid of any external funds they will receive in a given year, regardless of the amount, as these funds must be counted as a resource in meeting your educational costs and coordinated with your other sources of financial aid. If you do not demonstrate financial need, an outside award may be added to any merit awards up to Trinity's cost of attendance. If you do demonstrate financial need, an outside award when combined with other sources of funding, cannot exceed your financial need. In such cases, outside awards will generally reduce work-study and need-based loans; however, circumstances may require the reduction of your federal, state, or institutional gift aid as a result of external funds.

While the Office of Student Accounts is able to consider scholarships you will be receiving from external sources as an anticipated credit in settling your student account, they are only able to do so if you have notified the Office of Financial Aid that you will be receiving such funding. Be advised that a direct payment to your account for such funds will not be applied until we actually receive payment from the scholarship source. As a result, you should request that the funding source send a scholarship check directly to the Office of Financial Aid. If you receive the scholarship check, please forward these funds to the attention of the Office of Financial Aid at One Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas, 78212-7200. It is University policy to divide scholarship payments equally between the fall and spring semesters. Scholarship donors may request a different distribution of funding outside of the 50/50 split by providing written instructions with the scholarship payment.

The Internet can be a valuable resource in helping you to locate additional scholarship resources. Do not waste your money on fee-based scholarship matching services, which will not give you any better information than you can get from the free services available online. Scholarships that sound too good to be true, usually are. Please beware: if you have to pay money to get money, it's probably a scam.