1 - Make sure you are clear whether you are being offered a full ride or full tuition. The two can be very different in terms of dollars. Room, board and other fees can be as much as tuition itself. So just make sure when someone says "full ride" you understand if it covers all expenses or just tuition.
I will use Ds school to explain some other things you need to watch out for when figuring out costs to attend and scholarships. Oklahoma City University offers full tuition to National Merit Finalists. Tuition for next year is approximately $27,000 (room, board and other fees are additional). OCUs other academic merit scholarships are spelled out on their website. Students can get academic merit $ anywhere from $1700 - $8000 per year depending on their ACT score and GPA. Many students also receive a talent award which will vary from person to person. Merit and talent awards are stackable. There are other scholarships available as well that are also stackable in addition to merit and talent. This was important to us as we found at some schools you were not allowed to stack scholarships. You had to choose whichever scholarship offered you the most $ but you couldn’t combine them. This ended up making the offer not nearly as attractive as the schools that allowed you to stack scholarships.
The Clara Luper Scholars at OCU is basically a full ride. Students in that program receive funding that covers whatever tuition is not covered by federal and state grants and will also pay for standard room and board. But pay attention to what is required of you for any federal and state grants.
One nice thing at OCU is your tuition is guaranteed for 4 years so you don’t have to worry about large tuition increase surprises each year. You might check with the schools you like to see what their history of tuition increases is so you can plan for your 4 years accordingly.
Like most schools, at OCU, there are many other scholarships available so talk to the financial aid office of any school in which you are interested to make sure you are being considered for all scholarships for which you are qualified. Many require additional applications and paperwork and often have early deadlines so get on those as soon as possible.
Another thing to be aware of – if you receive any sort of outside scholarships (local, regional or national), be aware that many schools will deduct that amount from the amount they were going to give you in scholarship. It changes what they feel your need is. So again, make sure you talk it through with the financial aid office and really understand what your bottom line cost to attend will be.
Also make sure you understand what all the options are for room and board. Schools today have many different options for each and they can really vary in price.
And make sure you understand if there are “additional” fees required for any of your classes. There can be accompanist fees, lab fees, administrative fees… these can all really add up. So just make sure all dollars are accounted for so you have no surprises.
Lots to think about when figuring out your actual cost to attend!
Yes, D is happily at UArts. It wasn’t a full ride (which I understand is tuition and R and B) at either UArts or IWU; it was full tuition with a combination of merit and talent. She was not NMF; she never took the PSAT.
Belmont is one of the schools that does allow stacking of scholarships, and the Dean made it clear that any outside scholarships would not be deducted from the aide given by Belmont. D didn’t get in artistically, so I have no personal experience with how generous they are, but it sounded like they could be.
I think finances can be a crapshoot, especially if academic awards aren’t spelled out in detail on the websites, and even then, because schools sometimes offer more than what is indicated there. When we created D’s list, we researched how generous schools seem to be with female MTs, and D only included a few schools that weren’t known to have the possibility of being generous. (One was NYU, which she knew that she wouldn’t be able to attend financially, but she kept it on just to see if she’d get in.) Even then, we anxiously awaited financial results, and, at the end, were able to negotiate to get the cost down even more at two schools, one of them being UArts.
Great info above - thx. We only negotiated at one school (where D ended up going). I love the info though as 2nd kiddo heads into this and we really liked U Arts, so thinking we will look at it for #2 as well. Great to hear your D likes it @myloves
@bfahopeful, wow–round 2! So, do you feel equally as apprehensive/crazy/nervous, or is it not so much with #2 just because you’ve done it once? (I suppose you won’t be able to fully answer that until #2 is done with the process, though.)
If you have any questions about UArts or would like to try to meet up with D before/during/after the audition if your D does go for UArts (which my D likes to do), let me know!
@myloves - #2 has a couple more years. So I have a breather. But having just gone through it I am trying to gather more info on what I didn’t know much about last year. The finances was definitely part of that. Thanks for the offer at U Arts. If we go visit I will let you know!
Experience from applications last year: regarding private colleges, we found that the ’ full retail’ tuition varied considerably from one to another, but room and board fell within a narrower range. D deliberately applied to schools with excellent theatre depts but somewhat less selective academic ranges, and the majority of made offers for D’s academic stats (ACT 31, top 10% of class at comprehensive public HS) that brought the tuition down to what one of our California public universities would have cost. (D applied exclusively to schools from Chicago eastward). What I want to emphasize is that the dollar amount of the merit awards varied according to the ‘retail’ tuition, but the net cost to our family was very similar.
Private colleges that made additional offers were: Lindenwood University (stacking merit and acting scholarships that more than covered tuition), LIU (upped an existing merit scholarship offer after audition to almost cover tuition entirely), and North Central College (stacking merit and artistic scholarships; this was D’s ‘safety’ non-audition program that she would have been happy to attend, had she not received auditioned BFA admittances).
My daughter (BFA Acting and BA French) went to UMBC in Maryland and I believe her scholarship was called the Premier award. It was full tuition based on academics. At UMBC they also have the Linehan Artist Scholars program. It’s based on audition/portfolio review and maybe an essay–for visual and performing artists. I’m not sure of the amount of that scholarship–I believe it varies–but it also offers interesting experiences/activities in the arts for their students every year, including trips to NYC and DC for cultural events and a seminar class.
My son got into UMinn and was awarded a lot of scholarship money based on his academics. It was pretty close to full tuition (definitely would have cost less than an in-state school for him) because they stack scholarships. He didn’t get into the Guthrie BFA though, so he picked a different college.
The University of Alabama (alumni include Norbert Leo Butz, Michael Emerson, and Sela Ward) offers several scholarships based on GPA and SAT scores, with the top scholarship being for full tuition.