Housing/Food
Unless otherwise noted, your financial aid award is based on full-time status living in college-owned housing and the cost of the GoYeo meal plan
On-Campus Housing
Financial aid will be calculated based on the cost of the required Residential Education and Campus Dining plans (GoYeo, unlimited meal plan per semester/1 rate for all room types).
Off-Campus Housing
For students who choose to live off-campus, renting an apartment, you will not be charged by the College for housing, but our office will use a housing allowance in our cost of attendance to determine your need for need based Oberlin Grant, which will be set at $3699 per semester for 2023-24. The College will require students living off-campus to have a meal plan unless given an exemption by Dining Services. The cost of the GoYeo plan will be used in your financial aid cost of attendance for 2023-24. If you get an exemption for having a dining plan, we will use an allowance of $1500 per semester for the purchase of food, but you will not see a charge for any meal plan on your student account. Again, you will not see a charge for housing on your bill if you live off campus, and if you have an exemption for dining, you will not see a charge for food. But we will use these allowances in our process of awarding you need based financial aid for the semester or year.
Commuter Students
For students who live and commute from home, we will give you an allowance for housing and dining and add that to our cost of attendance, for purposes of determining your financial aid. The allowances will be set at $1500 for housing and $1500 for food for 2023-24. Again, if you commute from home, you will not see a charge on your student account for housing or food, unless you choose to purchase a meal plan.
Food - Meal Plans
As noted in each scenario above, your choice of a meal plan directly impacts your financial aid. If you are considering changing your meal plan and would like to know how it impacts your financial aid, please contact our office at financial.aid@oberlin.edu or call 440-775-8142.
OSCA
Students may choose to live and dine or dine only with the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. OSCA bills students directly for the semesters student live and/or dine with OSCA, so students will not see those charges on their student account. These charges are different than the housing and dining charges for living and/or dining with the College. The Office of Financial Aid will use the actual OSCA charge for either housing and dining or just dining in the cost of attendance used to determine financial need for need based financial aid, such as the Oberlin Grant. The cost of attendance we will use for OSCA is:
Housing: $8990 for the year, $4495 per semester (2023-24)
Dining: $6000 for the year, $3000 per semester (2023-24)
Students who change their dining status at any time during the semester, moving from OSCA to CDS for example, will have their CDS dining charge prorated and their aid will be adjusted based on that prorated CDS charge.
This policy regarding the awarding of aid for students participating in OSCA is aligning our financial aid policy with Federal Title IV financial aid regulations.