Feel free & glad it helps 
You may also want to read through my long, preachy posts in this thread (starting with comment #9). They were all directed at a high school senior who posted, so a lot of it is very heart-to-heart, kid-to-kid:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21777735#Comment_21777735
^ Comments #9, #18, #26, #27, #36, #59, #61 may be helpful 
@CourtneyThurston Good stuff. I happen to be in CS as well, and have done extremely well. I went to a school that Niche ranks a B- ⌠and honestly thatâs because it has a nice campus, greek and party life. Academically, it was lower than my high school. I decided to craft my own Comp Sci major there. Big fish, small pond. I was mentoring other students, working on building an online game (this was the 90s). When I came out of college, CS people were very hard to find, let alone able to communicate well, so I never had a challlenge.
College selection matters more for certain majors. For CS, I am not sure if I went to the same school today that I originally went to, that it would work as well. The field is far more competitive now, and flush with graduates. There are also many people like me who can evaluate candidates (back when I got out, no one could even evaluate us at companies as they had no experts). Having said that, I could interview a kid from a C school that seems to know her stuff, and choose her over a kid from an elite school that struggles with her stuff in an interview.
There are other majors where I think the name of the college may be more helpful. A huge part will always be the ambition of the kid (applying for internships, finding research work, job hunting).
One thing I have noticed, is that for my DD, a number of the more affordable schools donât even offer the major or minor options she is interested in. As an example, hands-on agricultural or environmental science is not common at many schools. Sure, they have a liberal-arts version of env studies, where you learn that toxic waste in the rivers is bad, and that solar power is good, but itâs not the same as working hands on in the large greenhouses, labs and internships available at the better schools.
But overall I agree with your point. I was an example of your point, especially for CS (itâs different for medical school, law, and so forth).
Although this topic is digressing a bit from the 3rd party scholarship banter
College selection does matter more for certain majors. CS is not one of those majors.
Is the daughter interested in cs? What is the field? EDIT: Environmental studies, or something close to that?
Are you still hoping to discuss 3rd party? I can probably give some advice along that front if youâre really looking (likely for the younger kids in the household, though), but the advice youâve already gotten in the thread is fairly comprehensive.
No, based on the responses I think that DD is going to look at a few select scholarships around her major and/or around the school she selects. I wont plan on her attaining any of them.
Her target major is environmental science. She is currently a Plant Science major at her HS, in the schools Agriscience and Biotech program, and she likes it. So she very well may switch from Env Science to some form of Agriscience or plant science. So schools she applied to all have both of these options.
She also wants to either dual major, or minor in Asian Studies, potentially with language (Korean/Japanese), so the school also needs a solid/strong Asian Studies program with those languages.
She applied to:
Uconn, UDel, Umass, Binghamton, Denver, Clark, Penn State, Buffalo and UVM
If it helps at all, when we did an engineering tour at University at Buffalo, our guide was telling us that there are lots of scholarships for current UB students to apply to. He said that not many students actually even apply, so they arenât really competitive. He applied for one and didnât get it but they gave him another scholarship since no one else had applied. He said there are some that arenât given out since no one applies. He also said his grades were good but not phenomenal.
I donât know if itâs like that in all majors there or at all the schools you mentioned, but just in case it gives you a little hope I thought it might be worth sharing.
Yes to the above- when we were on a college visit I told a professor I noticed continuing student theatre majors can get a scholarship automatically based on their GPA. She said yes, but a lot of them donât even apply. DD will be applying for the continuing student scholarships every year. Itâs one app for hundreds of scholarships.
@HankCT like I said, raise.me started after my kids got into college so Iâm not familiar with all the details⌠and I agree that they prob only give you what they determine they can/will give you, some raise.me and some other college funds. But perhaps for those that are not expecting any need based aid, and possibly merit, it might be good? I have no idea, just something folks might considerâŚ
@twicemama Hey, just want to say donât correlate my thoughts on raise.me with my thankfulness for your response! I truly do appreciate anyone taking the time out to help, especially with outside the box ideas. I do think that raise.me may be part of the evolution of college. The current system is not sustainable, not fair, and quite honestly, bad for the country as a whole. Itâs still good for the 1% and their kids, but the system really seems to penalize middle class kids quite a bit. If you can be dirt poor and do well in school (which is very hard), you can make a killing on financial aid. If youâre wealthy, well, options abound. Middle class, much like our tax code, pays the price.
@HankCT I know itâs late, but Iâm curious. Why only one private school on her list? They can be VERY generous with merit! My dd (probs lower stats than your daughter) couldâve attended Allegheny (honors invite) for less than UConn (weâre instate). Theyâre great for environmental science, though not sure about Asian studies. Most state universities are stingy with OOSers unless top stats.
@taverngirl When she was looking at colleges, she liked the larger schools with more facilities, more kids. We applied to Seton Hall, which is a private and has the same A- niche rating as Allegheny. They gave her 21K per year in merit, but this still puts the price at 36K per year after merit, which is still 8k per year more than Uconn. Clark gave 15k in merit, putting the cost around 41k per year.
We also applied to SUNY Buffalo and Binghamton since they are 40K per year FULL PRICE with no merit, which is cheaper than any other state schools, and she got 5k per year merit from Binghamton. Buffalo may match. But essentially it seems that all the options come in around 35-40k per year. I have to think our extremely high (and unwarranted) EFC is making us appealing to private schools, but as potential big payers, not so much as a student. Her UW GPA at 3.2 (taking AP/Honors/ECE) which our school only weights to about a 3.5, probably hampers our numbers a bit.
In some ways I wish I had more time to apply to some of the privates at this stage, but itâs March now.
A little additional info: She is passionate about Asian Studies (Allegheny has Chinese Studies only, she is almost entirely interested in Japanese and Korean, not so much China). In her ideal world she would major in Asian Studies, but we have told her we arenât willing to pay big bucks for that since it sounds like a hobby, not a career. So she is considering env sciences since she enjoys that too and you can have a career in it. Asian studies would only work if you plan to be a translator (she doesnt), or go strong into business or politics (she has interest in neither).
Is your EFC âunwarrantedâ or is your net cost âunwarrantedâ @HankCT
Please explain why you think this SFC is âunwarrantedâ.
The colleges on your daughterâs list do not meet full need for all. I think folks tried to explain that to you on your other thread (which I linked above) but you didnât seem to believe us, I guess.
And this:
I thought you were the parent. Your student is applying to collegesâŚnot you.
@thumper1 My EFC implies that I have 65K per year to give for college. I donât. Not even close. Not even mathematically possible. I am not sure how itâs derived, but although we have no 529, light savings, the number calculated seems to assume we have a bunch of both. I donât want to dwell on that too much, whatâs the point now?
Iâm not sure what your full need for all refers to. Our EFC is higher than full tuition, so we donât get any need based aid from anyone. So I am not sure what you are referring to.
Iâll ignore the snark/venom, but I am sure you well know that itâs a team effort, and I just used first person as a figure of speech. My daughter is 17, looked to us for guidance. Weâre the ones footing most of the bill, so my insinuation was that I wish we had encouraged her to consider more of a range of schools in terms of merit options. Instead she essentially picked 9 schools that were all very similar in rank, and apparently what they will give in aid. WE are all learning here, first go round.
Did you run the net price calculators before your daughter applied to colleges as suggested? Or are you in. Situation where they wouldnât be particularly accurate (self employed, divorced, own additional real estate). These net price calculators are there to help families in terms of cost projections.
Your daughter has some colleges on her list that donât cost as much as your EFCâŚand thatâs good. If your FAFSA EFC is in the $65,000 a year range, Iâm not sure those private schools would have netted more aidâŚunless it was merit aid.
But back to the topic of this thread.
3rd party scholarshipsâŚapply and see. Her best bet is local ones. While they might nitmbe renewable, they might put you in the position of being able to save money towards subsequent years by applying those outside scholarships now. They all donât consider financial need.
Your HS counselor likely has a list of local outside scholarships.
The NPCs were varied. For example, UVM said with her stats they would give her 14-20K per year in merit for academics. At the end of the day, they gave us exactly zero. When I emailed, they said they had a stronger than expected pool of applicants. So NPC was misleading in that case. UDel gave us exactly what the NPC said it would in merit. A bunch of other schools kindly gave us slightly more than we expected. They are good options, and might be what we end up going with.
She is looking at a few local ones that she could find relevant to her or her major. Like you said though, canât count on them annually, just have to try to win a few if we can anyway. I also have seen that the schools themselves have a lot. Buffalo for example had pages of them, and I think they can help you get some of they feel you have some additional need. School specific of course.
ButâŚyou donât have need if your EFC is in the $60,000 rangeâšď¸
soâŚlook for scholarships without a need componentâŚ
@HankCT while not for college, are you/your D familiar with the state depts critical language programs? NO cost to spend summers learning critical languages in country⌠my D almost did this to learn Hindi but had already spent two summers in India and didnât want to again but my nephew did the high school program in Morocco and had a good time. Korean, Japanese and Chinese includedâŚ
^ CLS is a fantastic opportunity but extremely competitive. So just keep that in mind; itâs a wish, not a plan.