Financial aid questions

I’m a rising senior who will apply this upcoming year. I have 2 younger brothers who still have to go to college so my parents can’t justify spending too much money on me for college. Unfortunately my family is in that tough spot where we make enough where we won’t get a lot of need based aid but not enough to really afford it all therefore I’m trying to stay ahead by knowing all I can about aid. I just want to make sure I’m understanding this all correctly. The Bloomburg, Hodson-Gilliam, and Hopkins scholarships are all need-based with no addition application, correct? It says on the website that it’s “highly competitive” but gives nothing else. Also can anybody correct me where I’m wrong and can current students give examples of how you paid for it all.

My daughter got into Hopkins.
We applied for aid.
She received $0.
Need-based aid is what the colleges consider to be your aid, not what you really will need to pay your bill.

Based on other student reports, their aid is not great.

Thank you @“aunt bea”. May I ask what is your income? I realize you might want to keep that confidential. Also I assume that your daughter ended up not going there, if so where did she go and with how much aid? Again if you are willing to answer.

We were upper middle income with a younger sister and brother.
(They were very interested in her because they liked her background in biomed at her high school where she followed up at the local UC doing research, with a family friend, in diabetes with mice.)

She received a full ride a SUNY Buffalo for bio.

Then she changed majors and went into EE and CS.

Thank you. Unfortunately that sounds a lot like my story.

I totally understand. Find a school that wants to fund you. It doesn’t matter where that is as long as you make the most of your four years.

PS, she got in again for grad school, but the difference is that her company is helping to pay for her tuition.