Your Aid Offer
We determine your financial aid by taking your Cost of Attendance and subtracting your Expected Family Contribution (EFC):
Cost of Attendance (Total Costs)
- Expected Family Contribution
= Aid Offered
When you receive your financial aid offer, it will most likely have three pieces: a loan, a work-study award, and a grant.
Loan
If your family's total income is above $40,000, part of the aid offered to you will be a federal loan. Federal student loans are typically the best loans available to a student.
How much of your aid will be a loan is determined by your family's total income, but $5,000 is the maximum loan we'll include in your aid offer each year.
Work Study
Students typically have $2,200 of work study in their financial aid offer.
If you're eligible for Federal Work Study, we'll include that. If you're not eligible for Federal Work Study, we'll include Duke Work Study instead.
Whether you're eligible for Federal Work Study has to do with your FAFSA and whether you have federal need.
Grant
Once we've squared away your loans and work study, the rest of your financial aid offer will be grant aid. So if you're receiving $50,000 in aid, we'll subtract your $5,000 federal loan and your $2,200 work-study offer, and you'll receive $42,800 in grant aid.
Your grant aid may be called "Duke Grant" or have a different name, depending on what types of grants or endowments we see that you're eligible for.