That is the approach we finally realized that our kids need to pursue. Our kids have a very limited college budget that is absolutely not even close to what our expected contribution is.
It can be an excellent college application strategy, but you need to craft their application list carefully and make sure that you are covering their academic needs, bc being awarded a scholarship does not ensure that the college will be a good academic fit. Our current college student is attending on full scholarship. He had 2 full scholarship options, one was not a great choice and one was. (These were not his only options, but just focusing on them bc they were his only full scholarship options.)
The one that was not a good option was his absolute safety. It was our local university where he had been dual enrolling. He was taking 300 level physics courses there his sr yr of high school. The dept offered him the scholarship and offered to create an honors program just for him. THe profs there loved him; he was blessed by their mentoring while he was in high school. Unfortunately, they do not have a grad program, and he would have run out of physics classes by his sophomore yr. They were going to offer him independent study courses and research with them. If we hadn’t had any other financial choices, it would have been a mixed blessing (affordable but academically a poor fit) that he would have had to put in a lot of effort to make work for his goals. I have nothing but good things to say about the dept, though, b/c the professors were so supportive of our ds.
His other full scholarship option was Alabama. He was awarded several competitive scholarships that stack on top of their guaranteed admissions scholarship. It has been a great fit. His scholarship covers grad level classes. He is in their honors research-focused program (CBH). He has been involved in UG research since his freshman yr. His professors are wonderful mentors.
(I should interject here and say we visited one full-tuition scholarship university where the only way to describe our dept visit is to say that it was a nightmare visit of epoch proportions. They were insulting about their own students’ abilities (that students’ perceptions about their actual knowledge and understanding was inflated) and were rude toward our ds, insisting that it was impossible for him to have mastered any material at whatever his current level was back then. Interjecting that here to stress that dept visits are vital. Your child has to fit into that dept!)
He was accepted into top programs, but they were all unaffordable. They were wasted applications and time. (Do NOT underestimate how much of a time suck college applications are!!) They were, however, excellent guidance counselor training for me. We took heart from his experience, and this time around, dd did not apply to any schools that did not offer competitive scholarships. We winnowed the competitive scholarship school list down-- first on the actual probability that she would be considered for them and second on her interactions with the depts. (Initial contact with depts were via email and then based on responses, we visited.)
Our strategy has proved successful. She has been awarded scholarships from every school she applied to and has been invited to competitive scholarship weekends at several schools to interview/compete for their top scholarships. We don’t know yet what the final scholarship awards will be at the competitive interview weekends, but we do know that she has affordable options.
Anyway, this is way too long. Her list included schools where we knew that she would get automatic scholarships (she is a NMSF) and schools with competitive scholarships we thought she was a strong contender to be awarded.