<p>Yeah. I totally understand. I was terrified that I wasn’t going to get enough aid. One of the main reasons why I even chose to apply to USC, was because I really needed a financial safety. When your EFC is 0, you <em>do</em> get a lot of aid, but it doesn’t really do much to dent private schools and because your EFC is 0, you can’t really make up the difference. I didn’t want a bunch of loans. I’m really, really glad to know that I probably won’t need them. My parents are paying about $6000 or $7000 right now for my high school education, and even with a huge tuition increase, they’d be only paying about $4000 for USC.</p>
<p>But I do agree. Every little bit does count. Sometimes I find it hard to ask my parents for $5. $100 can make a huge difference.</p>
<p>Yeah, I applied to a big variety of schools, and usc wasnt really a big contender until just recently. A lot of the schools I applied to were art schools, and so far i’ve gotten really good scholarships there, its just the cost of living at all those places, since they’re in big cities, is SO MUCH. And im not even sure right now what I want to go to college for. I guess that will depend where ever i choose on going. I used to go to boarding school, but that didnt exactly work out, so right now im home schooled doing online classes just trying to finish up. But im also working about 60 hours a week at two different jobs, which is a lot, but it will be a big help for the future and for right now. Living off my moms unemployment check really isnt the greatest thing ever, so supporting myself is really nice to be able to do, and helps out my parents a lot. And i plan on going to grad school and pharmacy school after I graduate, so i’m just trying to eliminate as much of the loans my first couple years of school as possible.</p>
<p>They might not be done updating everything, so don’t give up hope yet. Right now it only has my university scholarship in my awards, but I also received a departmental scholarship that hasn’t shown up yet. I heard I was getting that awhile ago too, so they’re just a little slow :). Good luck!</p>
<p>Nothing on my sons VIP, not even the music scholarship they sent him a letter about.</p>
<p>He did get a letter from Furman. After his $14k music scholarship, Life scholarship, work study, subisdised and unsubisidised stafford loans, we would still owe over $28k. Looks like USC here he comes (if they will match Coastal Carolina’s music scholarship).</p>
<p>we just heard on vip this morning. My son’s site says that grant money will be updated when the federal government allocates money to each state. I read a reply about out of state tuition reduction? How does that work? Thanks for any help on this.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that I won’t be taking them, though.</p>
<p>@imagep, Is your son going to Carolina this weekend to play with the band? My band director really wants me to. I’m not totally sure yet, though.</p>
<p>Out of state Tuition reduction comes with the scholarships. The Woodrow Scholarship is the lowest monetary award at $500 but it then also provides a significantly reduced Tuition. Not quite in-state rate, but very close. </p>
<p>I was disappointed to see that my son had lost $7600 in aid this year. As a rising Junior I guess I kind of expected things to stay the same as the last two years. At any rate, 2 of the grants he lost were due to lack of gov’t funding for the SMART Grant ($4000) and the ACG Grant (not applicable after soph. year). </p>
<p>And because he had a paid internship last year it increased our EFC which caused him to lose the rest. It is disheartening but we’ll figure it out. </p>
<p>AUGirl, we don’t know anything about that. He is going to Atlanta to play with Spirit of Atlanta (he will be touring with this summer).</p>
<p>Did you or anyone else here attend the “accepted students reception” at Carolina Country Club yesterday? Not a big crowed there, most of them seemed to be from my son’s school (although invites were supposedly sent out to most students in the upstate).</p>
<p>I did see one student wearing a USC Band Clinic shirt, didn’t recogize him though.</p>
<p>No. I wasn’t invited, which is odd, because many students at my school live in the CCC and I would have thought that it being in my area… but oh well. XD</p>
<p>And every senior accepted to USC with band experience was invited to play with the USC band today at the spring football game. I ended up deciding not to go. I don’t know anyone else going.</p>
<p>AU, I agree that is odd. I thought it was also odd that there were only a handful of students other than those from BSHS. My son has not yet committed to USC (probably next week), another student said that (like my son) he had also been accepted at Furman and hadn’t yet committed to any school. It’s possible that they only sent invites to students that had not yet committed.</p>
<p>Anyhow, it was nice but not super nice or exciting. They did mention that they had a record number of applications (over 20,000) and had accepted a smaller percent than normal. They also said that they capped the number of students entering in the fall at the same number they had last year. That may explain why they wait listed so many students and only promised Spring 2012 admission. </p>
<p>There was one student there who was accepted for the fall, but his twin brother was wait listed. That had to suck. And his best friend was also wait listed. Both of those kids wanted to play in the marching band at USC but neither auditioned as they did not expect to be able to get a music scholarship and did not intend on being a music major or minotr. so being wait listed to spring sucks even more for them as that eleminates the possibility of them doing marching band. I was thinking I should tell them to contact the marching band director and see if they couldn’t get moved up higher on the wait list. They are both decent musicians although neither of them is a great musician, they are both plenty good enough for marching band though.</p>
<p>Over half the people I have talked to were wait listed until the Spring. I guess USC-Upstate and SCC will have a lot of extra students for the fall semester.</p>
<p>I guess so, although I think everyone at my school got into USC this year. The good thing about SCC and USCU is that its really easy to transfer to Columbia. Strangely enough, I was at a local event the other day and they asked if any was staying in Spartanburg for college and out of the 20+ seniors there, not a one was staying in Sparkle City. Bizarre.</p>
<p>It must be awful to be on the waiting list. That’s happened to several of my friends for their top choice colleges.</p>