Can someone please share their experience with academic and athletic scholarships?
SAT: 1370
GPA: 3.6
Currently a junior at MATES (Marine Academy of Technology & Environmental Science.)
Athletics: Top 50 in NJ for XC & Track
Any help is very much appreciated!
ER is very generous. If you are female, even more so. Ask @CourtneyThurston
So, honestly: it depends.
I wouldn’t go as far as “very generous”. Riddle’s total cost of attendance is about 50k, and unless you’re instate, you’d be lucky to see more than 25k a year in merit aid MAX.
25k/yr to pay is pretty rough. There are A LOT of kids here in over 100k of debt (if not over 200k). Absolutely do not do that.
Your stats are borderline for the Presidential Scholarship, which varies in dollar amount. If I had to give you a ROUGH guess about the merit you’ll get, I’d guess:
15k Dean’s/Presidential Scholarship
So probably about 20k/yr in merit.
If you have financial need, you MAY see an extra 2-4k grant from the school… if it’s a LOT of need.
So figure for, yeah, about 25k in aid maximum. You’ll likely be left to cover the rest with loans and your own money.
Re: athletic scholarships. No idea. I get the impression those are a lot more generous if you’re actually able to play well + make whatever team.
The students who can actually afford to go here are generally either:
(1) Filthy rich
(2) In state students stacking a lot of stuff (like the institutional scholarships that are only for in-states, like Gold and Diamond Eagle Scholarships, and who have Bright Futures)
(3) (Good) athletes
I do love it here… but speaking very frankly, Riddle is pretty far down my list of “generous” schools (in GENERAL – they were very generous to me, but that was kind of a unique situation that took a lot of time, effort, unique stats, unique connections, and straight-up begging).
They’re definitely not anywhere near “meets full need”.
An athlete can take either athletic aid or financial aid from the school, not both. The student can take federal need based aid.
My D makes a similar school work, but she is a Florida resident so gets some aid from that. I do think get 50% in merit aid is pretty good.
@twoinanddone It’s token merit, though. I’ve never met anyone here who didn’t get “merit” scholarships.
I’m also not convinced percentage matters… 25k/yr is still 25k/yr left for you to pay.
That’s too much for the vast majority of U.S. families.
Thank you for the feedback. Gave us lots to think about. It’s greatly appreciated.
Courtney, you are so helpful. If you don’t mind me asking, my daughter got accepted to ER in November 2018 and received $9,000 Dean’s scholarship and $5000 for Women’s Merit. Her SAT was 1150, GPA is 3.4. She wants to major in computer science. Soooo was wondering, will more scholarships be forthcoming? We live in Los Angeles and I am not rich but certainty not indigent enough so not eligible for grants, etc. if we can get a few thousand shaved off, she would LOVE to attend ERAU.
Warmest regards!!!
FYI, I do plan to move to Florida when she is a Sophomore.
@JupiterBound That’s all the automatic financial aid/scholarships that they will give, unfortunately.
There are a few competitive scholarships available, but generally small amounts, and you have to do quite a bit of Google digging (they’re kept hush hush, not sure why). They’re available for FIRST Robotics, CyberPatriot, and some rocket competition competitors. Not sure when the deadline is; could be December.
@JupiterBound, you might want to look at Florida Tech too. Honestly, the scholarships change year to year so I can’t tell you what’s there now, but my daughter did quite well and her stats were similar to OP’s. This year, because it is the 60th anniversary, they awarded 60 full tuition scholarships. Usually they give 1/2 tuition scholarships (about $20-30k) as merit, and allow stacking of other scholarships. Florida residents can use their Bright Futures (then worth $2500-3200, now worth about $7k), the resident grant (~$3500, and JupiterBound, you’d get that after a year of residency), any local scholarships. FIT gives some money for robotics, eagle scout/girl scout gold, STEM high school grads, and those are usually about $3000 per year I think. Again, they change all the time.
I don’t know how much track and x-country athletes get. My daughter and her teammates got quite a bit in athletic aid on the lax team. Athletes are treated well and it is a fun community where they support each other at games, All together, my daughter had 8 scholarship/grants from the school and state and one outside scholarship (allowed to stack). As @CourtneyThurston said, it took some work figuring out what was available but was worth it arranging all the aid to make it work out. Florida tech does not have scholarships just for female students but there are a few private ones in the area from women’s groups and there is the society of women engineers that administers some private engineering scholarships.
Good luck
Thanks, Courtney. Unfortunately, she would have to apply to like a 1000 of those scholarships to help finance what Embry-Riddle is not (a bit of sarcasm here but kind of true). We may just have to rely on our fall-back plan to attend Junior College in Los Angeles (yuk!) and take it from there. I wish you luck, you seem so on top of things and have it all worked out - you go Girl!!!
If you think of anything else, I welcome your insightful comments.
twoinanddone- love the name. I have one at University of California, Irvine who will be done summer of 2019. Unfortunately, we checked FIT and and I have a strange feeling my daughter’s GPA (3.4), SAT scores (1150) will not get her in. She was rejected by Colorado Mines even though they sent so many emails stating how they were so excited for her to turn in her application and how she would be a great fit and what could they do to get us to speed up her application. after we turned it in, they said she was not a fit for them. You take it personally when your child is rejected. then she got accepted into ER (although I heard they pretty much accept anyone and lure you in with some scholarships). As for the athlete status, my daughter has a bum knee and never participated in sports. I showed her your email so she will check out your suggestions. HOWEVER, is that Florida grant of $3500 or so automatic? After one year of residency of course. That would sure help. I am in Los Angeles but am making my way to move to Florida with the next few years.
So happy things worked out for your daughter and you didn’t have to sell an organ to pay for college!
“ER (although I heard they pretty much accept anyone and lure you in with some scholarships)”
This is true.
Honestly, go to Junior College or another affordable place. Riddle is fine if you can afford it, but it’s not spectacular. I wouldn’t be here if I had to spend my own money; it only happened to be the right place for me because it was free + lots of scholarship refunds + personal connections to key people here that helped me get funding/influence/other things. Without all three of those things in play, I wouldn’t be here.
Colorado Mines is a lot harder to get into than FIT or ERAU. Mines is a state school so at least half the students are from Colorado (and I swear the other half are from Texas). Her SAT score is low for STEM schools. Whether she could get into FIT might depend on the math score and her high school math and science courses and grades.
Yes, the Florida resident grant is automatic for as long as the state legislature approves it. It is 40% of the tuition at the public schools, which currently is about $3500 per year. It is for residents going to a private school in the state of Florida.
RIT and ERAU are expensive and without all of the funds received from the school and the state my daughter couldn’t have afforded it. You play the cards you are dealt. Staying in Florida worked for this daughter, and FIT worked, but only because of her athletic scholarship. I brought that up because the OP of this thread said her daughter was in track and xcountry.
Thanks again for your help Courtney. One last ditch effort I will try is to visit ER in April or sooner and meet with a Financial Aid Officer and see if I can get a bit more (I know it wouldn’t be significant but a few thousand might help).
Thanks toinanddone, again, good luck to your daughter.
You might look at UToledo. They have a CSE major, would offer $13,500 off an oos CoA approx $29k (housing has different price points) so $15/16k net http://www.utoledo.edu/admission/freshman/scholarships/2019/out-of-state.html. It’s D1 with a xc team. They also do a lot of research on Lake Eerie so OP’s current hs experience might be a draw for some competitive scholarship opportunities. Promotional video “This Is The University of Toledo” at http://www.utoledo.edu/admission/
My son applied last year and we visited the Daytona Beach campus a couple of times. I remember them having a sliding scale of GPA & SAT/ACT that they used to award Merit Aid. The required stats to get the top tiers were not too high and the amount of the awards were in the $13-16k range for the highest levels. As others stated, there are additional opportunities for females,specific majors and likely other things. I remember there being some 3rd party opportunity for Meteorology that was significant, for example.
I am obviously on the back end of this conversation so I am sorry if I should post this somewhere else, but am trying to find out exactly how much tuition is at Embry Riddle in DB bc- my son received a “presidential” scholarship for $16,000 for a total of “up to $66,000”…wondering how this falls in place with the actual overall cost for an out of state student. He is not a Florida resident - but we plan to move there next year so am wondering how much that will effect the tuition. I know very little about private colleges and want to be sure I am finding out as much as I can before he decides to say no or accept it. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!