Can the Student Financial Assistance Office at the University I will be attending take my financial aid away?

Financial Aid has a maximum about per year that they can give you. Usually, they take the tuition and room & board estimates from your school to determine how much they give you for the academic year. If your school lowered their estimate because you no longer needed the room and board fees, that's probably why the amount of FA got lowered.

I'm not sure how much the max is for freshman, but as an example let's just say it's 10, 000. So if $10,000 is the max and your school's estimate is only 5k, that's how much they will give you (5k). You can always talk to the Financial Aid office at your school to request additional funding to receive the difference if you need it, but keep in mind you should only take out what you will absolutely need. These are loans you're taking out and they do add up.

The reason why you got more to begin with is because they put the total amount for your housing in the dorms and most likely your food expenses and sometimes a little extra. However, since you will not be living there those expenses are not taken off which is why your aid went down. There are many schools that will not provide aid for you to pay your rent and such off of school property and this is probably what your school does. Also, yes the government provides the aid but the schools request how much you are getting and can even return excess if they do so (especially if you have high loan amounts, want to make sure you wont be attending summer school and need more money etc...). If you cant afford to live off campus without that extra aid than you may want to talk to the financial aid department at school and see if you did live in the dorms if that aid would be put back onto your account. You still wouldn't receive it as it would go to pay your dorm but you wouldn't have to worry about the rent either.

It all depends where your financial aid came from. If it was all through the university itself, then they are able to reduce it or even cut it off completely. If however you went outside the university and applied on your own for grants directly from the government, they can't touch that. It sounds like you didn't, though. :/

What I'd recommend is looking around outside of your school's Financial Assistance Office and seeing what grants or scholarships you can qualify from from independent contributors. You could actually talk to your school's financial adviser and probably get a list of potential places to apply without applying directly through the school. I would also recommend checking websites like http://www.educationsconnection.com/index.php and seeing if they have any resources you could utilize without having to go through the school.

If you discover that you qualify for a scholarship or a loan, go ahead and apply for it. Even if you're applying to many more than you actually need, scholarships are a limited commodity and some will probably give them to other applicants instead, so just apply to everything you can.

Failing all else, there's always student loans, although I would advise considering those a last resort.

Your school is the one who determines your fin aid not the fed government. There are normally 3 different choices to determine your budget. It sounds like you were switched from being "On campus" to "Off campus". Apparently it costs less to live off campus (they are prob assuming you will get a few roommates, but groc rather than buy a meal plan...) then it does to live on campus. You can appeal, but it prob won't get you anywhere.

They most likely reduced some of your student loans. THink of this as a GOOD thing. The less you have to pay back when you graduate. And get a job so you can afford to pay that rent. This is the apparently the sacrifice you make for living off campus.

Andrea,

Every school sets what some schools call a "Cost of Attendance". This usually consists of your tuition cost plus misc. estimated cost that you might have like travel, personal expenses, etc. Since you will not be living "Off Campus", the "COA" is different from the "On Campus" one. When a school awards you aid they can only award you aid up to the COA for your situation, in this case "Off Campus". Since every school has to set these ahead of time so every student has the same COA for their situation (On Campus, Off Campus, With Parents). It sounds like when they changed you to Off Campus they adjusted your COA and therefore had to remove aid to bring it in line and under the COA for all Off Campus students. I hope this helps clear things up for you.