<p>I understand Caltech has an upper class merit award competition, but I'm not sure how applying for outside scholarships works given that no official grades are issued for the first two terms.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any experience applying for outside merit awards? If applying while a freshman, will these scholarships tend to focus on high school accomplishments (perhaps requiring high school transcripts, SAT's/AP's, etc)?</p>
<p>On this note, does anyone think I ought to bother with taking this last round of AP's?</p>
<p>It would depend on the scholarship, and I would suggest contacting the scholarship directors. You could probably get some sort of unofficial grade from profs, but that might be a pain to facilitate. I’m pretty sure that in the first term, no grades go to the registrar at all and I’m not sure they would be willing to let you use the “shadow” grades of the second term for scholarship purposes. (second term, the registrar is given “shadow grades” that don’t count for anything).</p>
<p>I did not apply for any outside scholarships while I was a freshman. Sorry. I really doubt though that there a lot of scholarships for people in college that require AP test scores though–so why take them?</p>
<p>I did figure that in general an undergraduate wouldn’t apply based on, of all useless things in this world, high school performance, but for a freshman, especially one without any official grades, it seemed logical that high school could be taken into account.</p>
<p>Just going to keep this thread going a little longer until someone who applied during their freshman year has any input.</p>
<p>On this note, if anyone has some advice for scraping any funds together at Caltech, it would be appreciated…</p>
<p>My son has applied for outside scholarships as a frosh. Several of them were a chance to continue scholarships he got while in high school. He has dealt with the GPA issue by sending his high school. transcript again, his all “pass” Caltech transcript, and a copy of the portion of the catalog that explains the pass-fail grading the first two terms. That is also how we have dealt with his good student discount on our car insurance. So far, we have not had any problems with this approach. He considered sending shadow grades on his unoffical grade report, but not all of his profs put his shadow grades in and he thought it would be weird to have only about half of the grades there. I highly encourage you to seek outside scholarships. He got some Caltech scholarship, and of course we got stuck with our EFC, but the remaining amount of his need, about $8,000, was supposedly met with some kind of lousy loans. We were already taking out loans to meet our EFC. He replaced many of those loans with outside scholarships, which are applied to loans and work study before they are applied to his Caltech scholarship.</p>
<p>I too, am stuck with an EFC that is slightly, well, higher than I can actually afford. I get a feeling that I might not want to wreck a perfectly fine AP record just yet, even if all my AP’s this year are silly liberal arts type classes thanks to my high school’s lack of a serious curriculum…</p>
<p>What type of questions were on the applications your son filled out for non-renewal merit only funds? Thanks to my EFC I fail to qualify for anything need based.</p>
<p>Aside from scholarships, you can be experiment subjects that pay relatively well. fMRI studies can go around $30 to $40 an hour. These might be useful:</p>
<p>Most outside scholarships available to continuing students have questions on them very similar to those available right out of high school. In fact, his brother picked up several of the forms for him from the high school guidance counselor. These are scholarships offered to either high school seniors or continuing college students. Several of the ones he is working on are need based to some degree, but since he does have that about $8000 gap between his Caltech scholarship and our EFC, he does have need that everyone will recognize. Not too worry about getting too many outside scholarships either. As I understand it, if they use up things like work study award or Caltech loans, they will only then reduce your Caltech scholarship with whatever amount necessary from the outside scholarships. You are, of course, always stuck with your EFC, unless some of those Caltech merit scholarships offer you something better. he is applying for some scholarships offered to continuing students that you can find on things like Fastweb, but they do not do a very good job of sifting out the ones that apply. I try to paw through some of those for him. Good luck in the money hunt.</p>
<p>Increasingly I’m starting to think that the only way I’m going to pay for all this is to abandon Caltech and find a black jack team at MIT.</p>
<p>@ jsd:</p>
<p>Being a professional lab rat is an interesting idea I hadn’t considered before.</p>
<p>@Crazy mom:</p>
<p>I don’t have the luxury of a need gap that scholarship foundations would recognize, but thanks to the total absence of grants from Caltech, at least I don’t have diminishing returns on outside scholarships. I’m starting to think that Caltech doesn’t really want me (and also my PFW host said that he picked me because I was the absolute last unpicked prefrosh left…)</p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for the information. I highly doubt that a few more liberal arts type AP’s can make a difference to any application after hearing everyone, so at least I’m deciding on one thing! I’ve conceded that I won’t have a shot at getting anything until after sophomore year.</p>
<p>Actually, I’ve known a couple of people at Caltech who paid for their education through online poker (seriously). MIT does Blackjack, we do Texas Hold 'Em.</p>
<p>I heard a rumor about someone from my school going to Caltech a while back and leaving early with his online poker winnings. This reminds me to ask around for the whole story. It think I heard something about his winnings fluctuating wildly and getting into debt before finally quitting way ahead.</p>
<p>I didn’t actually believe it when I heard it, so I just forgot about it, but now I’m curious…</p>
<p>Hey, if you have no need based aid, then I’m guessing outside scholarships are just gravy. They are out there, go get them aggressively. How nice of your host to tell you that you were picked last. If it is any comfort, there were a lot more people wanting PF than the number of them available. Actually, you sound perfect for Caltech with your sense of humor. I know how you feel about not being wanted though. My son kept being told he couldn’t negotiate a better deal with Financial Aid, only to see from the Frosh blog that the woman writing it kept cutting a better and better deal. They obviously wanted her more than they wanted him.</p>
<p>crazy mom: Since financial aid and admissions are pretty disconnected, what is more likely is that the financial situations of the frosh blogger and your son are different in some way (or the frosh blogger is just better at convincing the fin. aid office). I’m pretty sure that no one knows how much admissions ‘wanted’ you outside of admissions. </p>
<p>In any case, Carolus, if you think that the opinion of one upperclassman and the absence of grants from the FA office means that the institute as a whole “doesn’t want you” than you are being overly sensitive. Obviously, if we didn’t want you we wouldn’t have to take you.</p>
<p>For the record, lizzardfire, you can’t take anything I say all that seriously. I was just trying to lightly point out an irony, and on that note, I don’t have the absolute highest opinion of myself anyway and consider myself lucky to have been admitted. I got along great with my host and had a good time (this is why he felt comfortable telling me the story in the first place). In any case I’m fully aware the opinions of a single person are of no consequence.</p>
<p>If ever I appear overly sarcastic, just remember that my screen name is a reference to Chuck Norris.</p>
<p>@crazy mom:</p>
<h2>The mysteries of the financial aid office are many and beyond mortal knowing. For my part, Texas Hold 'Em is looking better and better.</h2>
<p>And a final question: if I just wanted to live at subsistence level for a SURF, how much could that save…?</p>
<p>You can’t make money playing Texas Hold 'em online anymore since they passed an act that made it difficult to transfer money into the online sites. Thus, the vast majority of the people left online in America are people trying to squeak out a living. Poker is a zero-sum game, so you can only make money if people are playing worse than you (and enough to pay for the rake–the commission paid to the site).</p>
<p>I joined some clubs that offered various free meals. The newspaper was at least one lunch a week and the student investment fund was a dinner a week. During the school year, the free meals don’t really save you money if you’re on the mandatory board plan though.</p>