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Old 02-03-2015, 05:15 PM
 
Location: southwestern PA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by searching4info View Post
I'm thinking now after reading comments on this post that the reason is my friend was in too high of an income bracket to get more.
Back when my kids were searching for a college, we were told (by several sources) that if you make more than $50K, you can kiss merit aid goodbye. I have no idea what that number is now.

The reason my son for full tuition was that the college went to university status and wanted to draw in some high caliber students to boost their numbers. Fortunately, that school had his particular major. (He wanted to go to Pitt but they did not have his major. He would have got minimal money there.)
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Old 02-03-2015, 05:31 PM
 
Location: State of Transition
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UC Berkeley says they offer full financial aid to around 40% of their students. Stanford offers it to all who need it, and it's all loan-free. More universities are beefing up their financial aid, in the wake of constant tuition increases and a growing income gap in the US.
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Old 02-03-2015, 06:28 PM
 
Location: Wisconsin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Momma_bear View Post
My experience is that full ride academic scholarships are rare. Students who are very poor may get enough financial aid so that they do not have to pay anything but full ride academic scholarships are unusual no matter how smart the student is.
Although, I am certainly not an expert. The only people that I knew who had full ride scholarships, among the children of my relatives & friends and friends of my children were either extremely smart, extremely poor or a combination of both. Three valedictorians (not those "shared" titles - but the number one student in their graduating class), a student with a 36 ACT with a single parent (low/moderate income), plus a couple of kids very smart (probably top 1% or maybe 2% of their class) plus some special skill such as sports or science or art were some of the students who I know of who had full scholarships.

Also, some colleges will talk about providing 100% of financial aid costs but only part is scholarships and a lot is work-study or maybe work-study and loans. So, be sure of exactly what your college means when they talk about providing 100% of the cost in financial aid, don't just assume that it is scholarships, it could mean up to 30 hours a week of campus jobs.

Last edited by germaine2626; 02-03-2015 at 06:45 PM..
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Old 02-03-2015, 07:06 PM
 
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Thank you everyone for your feedback. It's been helpful "talking" it out with multiple people and hearing other people's experiences.
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Old 02-03-2015, 07:19 PM
 
78 posts, read 124,701 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by germaine2626 View Post
Also, some colleges will talk about providing 100% of financial aid costs but only part is scholarships and a lot is work-study or maybe work-study and loans. So, be sure of exactly what your college means when they talk about providing 100% of the cost in financial aid, don't just assume that it is scholarships, it could mean up to 30 hours a week of campus jobs.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
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Old 02-03-2015, 08:18 PM
 
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The more prestigious a school, the more alumni and donors they have to fund scholarships. A smaller school with a less generous alumni base and less donors means less scholarship opportunity, usually (NOT always).

It is best to research the schools you are particularly interested in. Most schools, if they offer a full ride scholarship opportunity, will tell you exactly what you need to do to qualify.
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Old 02-03-2015, 08:55 PM
 
Location: California
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I've heard of high achieving students getting great offers from State schools and other non-exclusive universities. They do want those kids there, the kids that get in better places, so the only thing they can do is offer up $ or special opportunities to woo them.

My kids were B students and we made too much money to qualify for anything so we paid full tuition for our eldest to attend a State school. Our youngest took a different path and stayed in a CC for awhile before transferring to a State school and by then he was 23, the magic number for financial aid independence. Earning nothing has been good to him, between his Pell Grant and the State University Grant that we didn't even know existed and didn't apply for, his college is paid 100% with enough left over for food and gas. The last 2 years anyway.
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Old 02-03-2015, 08:58 PM
 
77,724 posts, read 59,880,182 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by searching4info View Post
Thank you for sharing Chemisty_Guy. It makes sense that test scores would be a very important factor in determining financial aid. Hearing other people's experiences is helpful.
If you go to a specific schools website they will generally list what you need to have in order to get their various levels of scholarship.

Just pick a couple schools and look around, each is different but it will give you a ROUGH idea.

For example, full ride to nebraska (Chancellors Scholarship) essentially requires national merit finalist.

You can get maybe 2/3rds off if you have 32+ ACT and high class rank etc. but to get the big one that's the golden ticket.

I would say that for most schools you probably need to be higher than 32 for a full ride...more like 34 and of course pretty much every kid scoring up around that mark has a good class rank.
That's why you need to prep like crazy because that might be the difference between 5 and 8 questions across all test sections.
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Old 02-03-2015, 09:04 PM
 
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We just went through this with our daughter and the answer is: all of the above. Every school is different. And they change what they are looking for on a yearly basis. But in general you can assume:

a. There are very few full ride merit scholarships. A lot of folks who say they got one are really getting a combination of loans and other aid.
b. Need based aid is limited to the very lowest end. Basically the formula pretty much assumes anything above about $40K - $50K per year income is "wealthy" and gets little need based aid.
c. When you see a school say they meet the full "NEED", they are meaning the NEED as THEY determine it, not as you actually need it. Most schools will have a Net Price Calculator. That will give you an idea of what that school determines your need to be. And you can start to compare schools.

There is a difference between "merit" based and "need" based. Many schools offer no merit aid. Others limit it to the Sheldon's of the world.

Check out Lynn O'shaughnessy's site The College Solution | A blog by Lynn O for the answers to most of your questions. Which you'll find probably aren't what you'd like to hear, but are realistic.
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Old 02-03-2015, 09:05 PM
 
13,248 posts, read 33,360,955 times
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I know very few students that got a full ride. I know a few that got free tuition but paid room and board. A friend of my daughters got a free ride plus a stipend for books, and a laptop. She was in the top five of the grad class and is now a producer for CNN.

We were fortunate in finding colleges that offered significant merit aid from private colleges for all three of my kids. My youngest, who will graduate this coming Spring did get the Presidential Scholarship, and two other smaller ones for a total of $11,000 per year. My older kids got higher amounts. He was offered scholarships from a few colleges for being in the Robotics club in HS. All three were B, B+ students. We did not qualify for need based aid.

I found this site really helpful in guesstimating what the price we would pay would be: College Navigator - Ursinus College You'll notice the avg. amount of grant per student is over $26,000. at this college. There are links to several sites at the sticky at the top of this page to help you in your search. There were no surprises in our financial aid packages and it's even easier now because you can use the aid calculator for every school. FinAid | Calculators
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