I think the biggest benefit is that if you get $40k for 4 years, and it replaces $40k of FA in year 1, if you only get $20k in aid in year 2, you still have the whole $40 from the scholarship. It does not vary with your income. So if you start making more $, you still get $40 a year paid!
@OHMomof2 I have never heard the ‘spread the wealth’ in any way. Is this something you have heard or just guessing out of the blue? Let me know if you have a source. OTOH you do see students with multiples of awards. And Cal Newport on his blog thinks that having a list of awards actually adds to credibility and reinforces that you are an impressive person and I can ‘guess’ out of the blue that it could reinforce that the committee is giving it to someone deserving of the honor/award. Building a resume of impressiveness is something he believes in, and he knows more than I do. However he may be talking year on year as he says this is why you should apply for scholarships each year. I really don’t know for intra year what is best.
@BrownParent - I don’t have a source because I am honestly asking the question.
I’m asking because D is filling out scholarship apps right now that are handled through a single county foundation. She won one from them last year (not renewable) and one from a different one last year (renewable). IDK how many kids applied to the first one but for the second she was one chosen out of 100 applicants.
I’m asking if mentioning those would be impressive/helpful for new scholarships for the upcoming year or if it be more like “we already gave her one/she already has some let’s give another kid a shot” - aka spread the wealth.
It depends on the organization giving the scholarship. Some committees intentionally seek out kids who might be off the radar of the typical “lots of volunteer hours” type of student and try to give the awards to kids who don’t have a page full of other awards. And others like the reassurance that they are investing in a kid who others have already found meritorious.
I don’t think you can generalize.
You should take Cal Newport’s advice with a grain of salt.
@brownparent There are some major scholarships that will ask students to disclose what other scholarships they have been awarded because already receiving other major awards makes the student ineligible. (Source: personal experience).
I don’t think that is a bad thing. Once a student starts amassing outside scholarships that reduce institutional aid they gain nothing except a trophy and are effectively taking scholarship money away from other students that need it.
Except that it frees up the university money to be used by another student. If the university awarded $30k in need based grant money to a student but that student reduced need by getting an outside $20k scholarship, presumably the school will give that money to another student.
However, the outside scholarship giver would rather give the money directly to a student of its choosing, rather than indirectly if the money it gives causes a college to reduce grants to the student, even though the school could then give that money as a grant or scholarship to some other student.
Perhaps an outside scholarship giver could cap the amount of the scholarship to the amount that can be given to the student without causing the school to reduce its own grants (often up to just the amount of loans and work-study listed in the financial aid offer), if it wants to maximize the scholarship money it alone controls.
The organization I work with tends to fund kids who are off the radar of other scholarship funders. If we can buy a kid a laptop, a winter coat, and a plane ticket so that he/she can actually attend the college which has given him/her a generous need-based package, we consider it a good investment. We aren’t interested in letting kids “stack” a huge number of scholarships; if someone who was the beneficiary of one of our scholarships started a brag list about how they got excess funds and couldn’t even use them all simultaneously our donors would revolt (and that would be the end of our program).
Kids- you might want to consider that the organizations which are giving you these merit scholarships don’t really want to read your list of “I got half a million dollars in money- ask me how” posts. Donors give money to bridge the gap between what a kid NEEDS to get a degree vs. what he/she is getting (government, the college, parental resources, work-study). Donors aren’t giving the money for bragging rights or to pad a resume. So if you are lucky enough to win one of these awards- show up when you are asked to get your picture taken with the scholarship committee, write a thank you note and put a stamp on it, and mail it, and then be modest and humble about your financing.
^ see that makes me think she shouldn’t put on her scholarship app that she was the recipient of other scholarships.
I can only speak of the one organization I’m affiliated with, OHMOmof2- and we try to target our funds to kids who are staring a gap in the face and have no other way to bridge it. These kids generally are not on an athletic scholarship; have spent their afternoons babysitting for younger siblings, working at the local diner to help pay the utility bill at home, or taking grandma to the doctor (to translate) so they don’t have the impressive EC resumes. They are generally strong students with serious academic interests who won’t attract the attention of the big name scholarships.
We know that even after a generous need based package is factored in, there will be a portion of self-help plus logistics to get started on college. We like to fill that gap. We are not interested in kids from affluent families stack up merit scholarships for bragging rights- not our mission.
But then who goes first, the private scholarship or the school? I know a kid who got a very prestigious scholarship, one of only two given in the state each year. It covers anything not covered by other scholarships. Kid went to Yale, so does Yale give the need based scholarship and then this one just gives a little, or does this big scholarship go first and Yale gets to keep its money? This private scholarship wasn’t going to be re-awarded as there is no set amount for each year or each student, just what is needed. The amount of the private scholarship varies depending on where the student attends, how much he got in other scholarships, transportation costs, etc. Should he have not applied for it? He didn’t know he was going to Yale when he applied, nor how much money he’d get.
I’m sure Yale knows how to handle a generous outside scholarship.
It is wonderful that this kid got the private scholarship-- and of course he should have applied. He could just as easily be heading off to BU, with a gap in his need-based aid, and the outside money would make the difference between attending and not attending.
Yale doesn’t “keep” the money- they have a financial aid budget like any other line item … some years they hit it on the nose, some years they are over, some years they are under. They’ve also got a snow removal budget- for the last few years they went WAY over (very snowy years), this year there has been no snow at all and the season is half over.
Like I said- they will have a policy they follow for this particular scholarship.
Yale’s outside scholarship policy is at http://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/types-aid/scholarships-and-grants .
Basically, outside scholarships will first reduce student work expectation (what they call student effort of $4,475 to $5,950, described at http://finaid.yale.edu/award-letter/financial-aid-terminology/student-effort ), then reduce Yale grants.
So an outside scholarship giver who knows that the student is going to Yale may choose to limit the scholarship to $4,475 (frosh year) or $5,950 (other years) to maximize the benefit to that student and maximize what it keeps to award to other students.
I think this says it all. After reading hundreds of posts by parents and students that are gapped and desperate for outside scholarships I do believe that there comes a point when amassing scholarships is greedy, and telling everyone how much you won is distasteful.
But that isn’t the intent of the giver. Organizations hold fundraisers and solicit donations believing that they are helping the student that they select, not adding to a university endowment. My S15 received several minor scholarships of $500 and less from small nonprofit organizations. Those types of organizations literally pass a hat amongst their members to offer the scholarship and it is big deal to them. I would be embarrassed for him to have accepted that money and to then post on the internet about how much money he had won.
Planner- your son should be very proud of his accomplishments. And yes- many of these awards are a big deal to the organizations which sponsor them. I’ve seen that $500 for lab fees and $750 for transportation and winter clothing can make the difference between attending a four year far-away college vs, staying home and commuting to CC. Nothing wrong with CC. But families who are already facing the loss of income from a HS kid who has been contributing from his/her earnings if he/she moves out of town for college just can’t scrape together those last funds for the family contribution and incidentals.
One of our awardees is now in med school. His original plan was to get certificed as a Pharm Tech or an LPN at the local CC. How great is this country???
But often the student doesn’t know what scholarships he will receive when applying. The student I referred to above probably applied for the big award before he even applied to colleges. He didn’t know where he’d be going, which awards he’d win. I’m sure he did apply for a lot of the $1000 and $3000 awards too, as well as the’full ride to anywhere’ scholarship long before he knew Yale would meet all his needs.
So many of the big awards are given long before the end of senior year. This same student could have applied to the scholarship and needed every dime to go to a school that doesn’t give any merit or need based awards, or even to a service academy. He didn’t know what the aid would be when applying for the scholarships. He wouldn’t know if Yale would cover a computer or if Flagship would require him to buy insurance or pay high lab fees. Why shouldn’t he win the Elks scholarship if he applied and was the best candidate, wrote the best essay, gave the best speech or whatever the qualifications are? I don’t think he should be concerned that he won a prize and someone else didn’t.
I know the society of women engineers serves as a clearinghouse for many awards that used to be given at the state or even local levels. They now share one application and I’m sure one of the reasons was so that all the smaller awards don’t go to the same person. A ‘spread the joy’ system. The applicants benefit because they only have to apply once, but they also may not get as much money as one lucky person used to get if she won 4 or 5 of the awards. Some organizations don’t want to give up that power of deciding who gets there $500 or $10,000, so they don’t join in the group application process. It’s up to them.
@twoinanddone I wasn’t referring to your Yale student at all, but if it is the Elks scholarship that you are referring to it is awarded late in the season and they do require that the recipients disclose their unmet need, so that is all that would be awarded.
Exactly the scenario with D - a shared application. If they know she got one (the other she has that’s renewable is from a different foundation altogether, not same app), does it hurt her for the others? Spread the wealth, joy, whatever.