Scholarships are tough to come by for continuing students it appears. I believe I have strong credentials (3.96 GPA in Mays junior year, FISH, FLO, volunteer) But have only received one scholarship for $1,000. My parents are not rich but FAFSA says we are not in need. Am I doing something wrong or is this the way it is at TAMU?. My niece goes to SMU and seems to get more scholarships every year with lesser credentials.
Most continuing student scholarships don’t happen until summer. My son thought the same thing last year and we were concerned he might not get anything, but several came in May, June and July. I don’t even think the continuing student scholarship application is due until later this month.
You can’t compare school to school directly. SMU tuition is roughly 48,000/year. http://www.smu.edu/Admission/FinancialAid/Costs TAMU tuition is 9,500/yr. and 28,000/yr OOS. http://financialaid.tamu.edu/Undergraduate/Cost-of-Attendance#0-Undergraduate So, if you are instate, $1000 at TAMU = roughly $5050 at SMU. OOS $1000 at TAMU also gets instate waiver worth 18,500 for a total of $19500. In SMU dollars that would be $33,400.
To answer your question about continuing scholarships - my Aggie qualified for multiple continuing scholarships from the university pool (non- need) however got a notification that he would only be getting the highest one since they are trying to spread the scholarships ( He has a 4.0 plus leadership, honors, etc). However, he did get a second scholarship later from his major ( he already also had two more that were 4 year scholarships). Your application does go to many spots - apparently the “one per student” ruling is for those decided by the university FA section. Also very few scholarships are over $1000, so you would have ‘win’ multiple ones to get higher dollar amounts. Really large scholarships are $5000 to put some perspective into the awarding process - there are a few higher than this, but very few.
There use to be a by scholarship name list for the business school with dollar amounts, it seems that it is no longer available. Mays also requires you be a U2 standing student at time of application so the typical sophomore is not even eligible for Mays scholarships since apps are due in Feb. of freshman year - you’d have to be a sophomore by units after your first semester… IMO a crazy rule, so you are only eligible for university wide ones your sophomore year, if you don’t have 30 units.
My oldest was only eligible her senior year for major based scholarships due to her planning of her credits - didn’t declare her major early enough- you had to declare by end of Fall sophomore year, to get a junior year scholarship in your major. Now there are fewer credits required to declare, there will be more people in the’ by major’ applicant pool.