<p>I am currently a student at the University of Minnesota, and I am thinking about transferring after the 2012-13 academic year. As of right now, I really don't have a solidified list of schools, but just a list of possible/"dream" schools. I was wondering if there are scholarships or financial aid packages that universities have for transfer students. </p>
<p>I'm getting a decent amount of money at the U, but I really am not impressed or enjoying the university. Obviously the answer depends on the university I apply to, but in general, I didn't know if there are transfer student scholarships or financial aid packages.</p>
<p>My experience here in Texas is that other than need based aid, grants and scholarships are much harder to come by for transfer students. The focus of funds is on the incoming Freshman. Some schools do have transfer scholarships and they are usually easily identifiable on the school’s websites. Most are for scholastic achievement like PTK membership, etc. Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX also has an automatic 1/2 tuition scholarship for transfer students with a 3.7gpa or higher and those students compete for 10 full tuition scholarships. I have found SMU to be unusal though in the amount of funds available to transfer students and those funds are only available to the best scholars.</p>
<p>Need based FA for transfers varies with the school. At some you are treated just like fr applicants, at others, there are less funds available for transfers. You need to check each college website.</p>
<p>Relatively few colleges give merit aid to transfers compared to fr applicants, and the amount are generally less as well. See the Transfer Students Resources thread for a link to some schools that have merit for transfers.</p>
<p>entomom, it appears you have experienced the same situations as I have. Even though my daughter has a 3.8 gpa, there are no scholarships being offered to her as a transfer student to one of our state’s flagship universities. Their aid package was a combination of unsubsidized student and parent loans. I suspect some state univresities are better but the emphasis is certainly on the freshman student. For the life of me I don’t know why given that many universities graduate half of less of them anyway. It would seem to make more sense to provide some non-needbased aid to transfer students who have already weathered the winnowing process.</p>