Okay so after doing a lot of research on scholarships, I feel that Penn State might have one of the least informative websites when it comes to merit scholarships offered directly by schools. Based on what I could gather and my understanding of how college enrollment works, I have come to this conclusion: Penn State hardly offers any scholarships at all as they don’t need to because their enrollment figures are already high as it is and they don’t feel the need to bring in/ appeal to more students.
Can someone tell me if I’m wrong on this (bc I really hope I am lol).
Right now, my #1 choice is my in-state flagship, the University of Michigan (which also refuses to give any real info when it comes to scholarships lol). Obviously though, no matter how good you think your stats are, you can never assume you’ll get accepted to a school like UMich (My ACT matches their mean for the CoE but my GPA is a 3.65 vs their average of 3.92 UW). Subsequently, my #2 school is Penn State, but if their real COA would actually be close to the estimated OOS COA on their website, it would just be more ideal to go to Michigan State and pay half that even though it is somewhat less prestigious than PSU.
Here are other factors/stats that might help you name a specific scholarship/amount I could earn:
ACT: 33 Composite (S:36, M:30, R: 33, W: 33)
UW GPA: 3.65
Weighted GPA: 3.88
IB Diploma candidate
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Campus: State College
Home state: MI
Also, I doubt they would, but does Penn State have anything like Florida State where you automatically qualify for an in-state tuition waiver if you get a 32+ ACT (regardless of financial need, which is what most tuition reduction waivers are given for)
Generally correct. Schreyer, the honors college, gives money to their 300 incoming freshmen, and I believe the engineering department has a little bit of merit money, as does the Provost’s Fund. I think I am an outlier, though, having received several scholarships from those three places. Apply and see what they offer you, but keep your expectations low. If you run the NPC you can see that any “aid” is mostly loans, and merit money is fairly rare.
Not that I know of. They need you guys to be full-pay.
I’m going to assume you didn’t actually mean 95k because that’s like twice PSU at full price…
If you had my freshman aid package (assuming none of the amounts have changed over time because I can only look at this year’s aid online…GO HOME LIONPATH):
$43,272 CoA - $(4000+4000+5000) grants from PSU - 5,500 federal loans = $24,772 at basically the (very unlikely) lowest.
@bodangles I meant 95k for the 4-year total. I should have specified that, my bad. And okay, that does give me an idea. Even with the best case scenario, Penn State would still be about 30k/year if you don’t consider federal loans since you have to eventually pay those back too. This would lead to PSU being about 120k over four years as opposed to 95k at MSU… Thanks for the insight.
Look into UAlabama, with your ACT and GPA you should qualify for automatic full tuition, plus an extra $2,500 a year for engineering. They attract lots of OOS students. Your 4 year total might be less than $60k.
They are also very generous with AP credits, and such so you might be able to graduate in 3 years or get your Maste’s and Bachelor’s in 4 years. They also have a unique STEM to MBA program.
Yeah I have already been accepted there and got a letter confirming that I qualify for the Full tuition presidential scholarship to Bama. I’m asking about Penn State specifically though and it’s not just because I’m looking for random options. My dad went there, I have cousins in the area, and have made a couple trips to watch football at Beaver Stadium. It’s more of a personal affection I have for the Penn State which prompted to me to ask for details on their scholarship system, as opposed to me asking just so I can add another name to my list based on new info I may get. Thank you for attempting to bring it to my attention though as Bama’s scholarship program is definitely notable and should be advertised as much as possible.
