A friend of our family is considering transferring to UA from another state school as a sophomore in the Fall. The student’s GPA is 3.6-3.7 for the first semester of college. His ACT score was 1410 as a senior in HS with a 4.2 GPA. He has some college activities as a freshman. I have been trying to help this family determine if there is merit aid available to them. The UA website instructs filling out a scholarship form. Does anyone from OOS have experience in obtaining merit aid as a transfer?
I have no personal experience, but the UA Scholarship website indicates available awards:
I would also maybe contact the department for the major he is interested in to see if they have scholarships.
Also…have your friend check with her/his area’s Alumni Association to see if they have any awards.
Has the student applied to UA? Has s/he filled out the transfer scholarship app?
Unfortunately, the most and best awards are for incoming freshmen.
Is that her/his M+CR SAT score? If so, then it’s too bad that s/he didn’t apply as an incoming frosh. S/He’d have gotten free tuition.
What are his/her parents saying about how much they’ll pay each year?
Edit…I see that your DD is a frosh with the Presidential. Is this friend hoping to get something like that?
Does the friend have any talents, like music or debate club? If so, maybe they could audition…altho I think for Music performance, the student would have to major in that.
The Debate Forensics team has good sized awards.
All great ideas thanks. mom2collegekids–the student does have a 1410 M+CR score, and would have been eligible for Presidential as a freshman. He chose a top 25 ranked university (chased rankings and readily admits it). He is very unhappy with his college choice, and would leave today if allowed. Grades in college are fine. He discovered that what he wants in a college experience and what he has are two different things–simply made a mistake. He knows our DD has had an outstanding experience in her first semester at UA, and is interested in a transfer. However, the current school provided an excellent scholarship package, and for an OOS student, his parents are paying about $22K a year for tuition, room and board. He needs to find a similar scholarship elsewhere to transfer. The UA website is pretty quiet on types of scholarships and amounts for transfers, so the parents aren’t even sure whether to go through the process. The family has seen the campus and taken a tour. They have not met with Honors College yet. They are ineligible for any type of financial aid.
This student is science oriented–pre-Med. No music or debate talents that I know of. As a point of clarification, he has completed only one semester of college to date, but that makes him ineligible for most freshman scholarships at colleges in the US.
Unless somehow the local alumni group gives amazing transfer awards, I don’t see how he’d get net costs down to $22k. The COA is in the mid-to-high $40’s, I think.
I know it’s frustrating for transfers, but that’s just the way it is…even with only one semester of classes, he’s a transfer.
Generous scholarships are awarded by schools to get the best incoming freshman class profile. This helps with ranking. Transfers, don’t help a school in that way, so there’s little motivation to be very generous.
For the cost of applying he can try, but I’ve never heard of generous merit for transfers.
The Honors College does not have merit for transfers. It hardly has any merit at all for even freshman.
I think someone posted a week or so ago something about getting a good transfer scholarship, but I don’t know if that person had any hard facts or was just assuming based on the freshman ones.
What does he not like about his current school?
Yikes, this is the kind of thread that makes me nervous when it comes to our son making the final decision on where he should go.
Wishing luck to the OP’s friend!
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UA has pretty generous transfer scholarships too, but the presidential is only for freshmen applicants.
If one has an ACT 32, it’s basically always better to apply to merit scholarships as a freshman and NOT go to community college “to save money”, since transfer scholarships are never as generous, even at generous universities.
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when you wrote the above, what kind of transfer scholarships have you known?