Some students can add their scholarships together until they pay for tuition, while others cannot stack their specific scholarship types, causing confusion and frustration.
The majority of academic and departmental scholarships are stackable up to full tuition, but cannot cover room or board, officials said.
Athletic scholarships can cover tuition, the university general fee, specific athletic room or athletic board, or parts of all.
These scholarships cannot cover fees or any other costs because the majority of the scholarships the school offers students up front are discount or waivered. There is no actual monetary funding behind them.
“Awarding the scholarships up front as a discount allows us to not have a limit on the number of scholarships that we can award,” said Denise Flis, senior director of student financial services.
After students are offered their scholarships up front, Flis takes the majority of earnings the school receives from endowments and gifts to pay for the students.
But some scholarships are not stackable, Flis said. For example, if a student is a double major and is offered two departmental scholarships, the student can only accept one, because accepting two most likely would exceed the cost of tuition.
“I received a Clara Luper/American Indian scholarship, but it wouldn’t stack with my academic scholarships for my GPA and ACT score,” said Adrienne Pierce, acting junior.
If an outside scholarship specifically covers tuition, students can only use it for that purpose, even if they also have an OCU tuition scholarship.
“I’ve had no luck with overlapping scholarships from OCU,” said Laura Jardine, biology junior. “Also, I have an outside one for tuition, but I can’t use it on anything because my tuition is already covered.”
If students received only monetary scholarships, they could stack all of them, Flis said. Outside scholarships also can be stacked, unless they specifically state they are restricted to tuition, board, etc., she said.
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