Housing/Dining

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). If you choose to change your dining plan during the semester,  your Financial Aid will be affected and the Oberlin College Grant will be prorated accordingly. 

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 $3429 per semester. The College will require students living off-campus to have a meal plan unless given an exemption by Dining Services. Unless you choose a different meal plan, the cost of the Cardinal meal plan of $2498 per semester will be used in your financial aid cost of attendance. If you get an exemption for having a dining plan, we will still use the cost of the Cardinal plan in our cost of attendance to determine your eligibility for need based aid, but you will not see a charge for any meal plan on your student account. If you choose a larger meal plan, your aid will be adjusted accordingly. 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 dining. 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 $2498 for dining. If you choose to have either the Gold or GoYEO plan, your Oberlin College Need-Based grant will be adjusted dollar for dollar accordingly. Again, if you commute from home, you will not see a charge on  your student account for housing or dining, unless you choose to purchase a meal plan.

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: $8326 for the year, $4163 per semester

Dining: $5100 for the year, $2550 per semester

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.