I’ve read that Florida schools such as UF, FSU, and USF give scholarships that cover the COA for OOS students starting this year. However, I can’t seem to find anything on UF’s website confirming this. Is this really true?
The schools don’t award them, a separate state agency does.
https://www.floridastudentfinancialaidsg.org/SAPHome/SAPHome?url=home
(site is down until Sept 9)
@twoinanddone so is it safe to say I’d get the full COA scholarship if I was an NMF?
Yes.
You can look on the UCF site for an explanation. Some of the schools are better than others at explaining merit.
UF definitely does not “advertise” the OOS National Merit COA scholarships as much as some of the others do. We live in Maine and my daughter just did a tour at both USF and UCF on a quick trip to Florida last week. Both of those schools do a fantastic job of explaining how they cover COA for sure but I am not familiar with how the other ones in FL work. I think UF brings in a lot of NMF kids anyway so maybe they do not feel they need to advertise it or make as much of a big deal about it. My daughter so was impressed with the UCF Burnett Honor’s College that I don’t even know if we will visit UF now.
@FrozenMaineMom Ah it just seems too good to be true! If I go visit UF, I’ll probably visit UCF as well. I want to study engineering so I’m leaning towards UF 
@hashtagwhynot , believe it! It’s called the Benacquisto Scholarship, and pays for the entire cost of attendance. The program was extended to OOS NMFs beginning this fall. My son is an OOS NMF attending FSU on the scholarship. As long as you are admitted to one of the Florida institutions on the list, and you are a National Merit Scholar (they give you a small NMF college sponsored scholarship that makes you a Scholar), then you will receive the Benacquisto. Look into it!
Does anyone know what the amount of the scholarship will be and what the cost will then be to attend either UF or UM? I’ve called both schools but nobody at the schools seem to know about this. Also, what happens if the law is changed. Since nobody at the school is even aware of the oos benefit, I don’t know how I will get a reliable answer to this question. TIA
@lucy78 , at UF you would receive the full cost of attendance including a waiver of OOS tuition, so no substantial cost at UF. At Miami you would receive about $22,000 (it changes yearly) leaving another $45,000 or so but Miami will stack other scholarships you receive. Only the admissions dept at UF or Miami can tell you how they would handle a change in the law. FSU commits to pay the Benacquisto itself if the State defunds it while you are there, but I have not heard a peep from UF or Miami on that.
@lucy78 – Welcome to the conversation! @vistajay has it exactly right. You have inadvertently tapped into one of the great unresolved issues from the last admission cycle, which was the first to include OOS Benacquisto scholarships.
For the sake of completeness, there is a widespread misconception that the Benacquisto is a full ride at all of the participating Florida schools. This is true at the PUBLIC schools, but the legislature limits its value at UM to the highest published COA at the 5 participating PUBLIC schools. As @vistajay correctly stated, it was around $22-23K last year, and will adjust this year to whatever the highest public number ends up being. As you can see, better than a sharp stick in the eye, but far from a full ride at a school with a $70K COA. Also, I am sure that everyone’s assumption here is that folks chasing National Merit scholarships do not have significant financial need. This is important since, while the Benacquisto at UM will stack with any MERIT scholarships you are lucky enough to receive, I am 99.9% sure it will not stack with need based aid (which also usually includes scholarships), since it won’t change your family’s EFC as calculated by the school. In other words, it will reduce dollar for dollar need based aid you would receive at a private school like UM, and will only reduce your total out of pocket costs if your need based aid is less than the amount of the Benacquisto.
As far as your other question goes, as I said above, we had a spirited debate last year with no resolution. As @vistajay said, schools like FSU and UCF that were aggressively recruiting OOS NMFs before Benacquisto was extended to OOS have made a commitment to fully fund the scholarships if anything bad happens with Benacquisto in the future. Schools that made no such effort to recruit NMFs before have not made such a commitment, nor is it reasonable to expect them to do so. This is a state program, and schools like UF are happy to take the state’s money and have NMFs attend. But schools like UF and UM made a decision long ago to not use their resources to fund large scholarships for NMFs, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to feel forced to do so if the state wavers in its commitment, as it is likely to do at some point (although hopefully not so soon after passing the legislation!).
Based on the research I did last year, I think the legislature is vastly underestimating how popular the program is going to be, and is going to be shocked when it gets the bill for the Class of 2023. In fact, I think UF is going to be the #1 destination in the country for NMFs, taking the place held by OU for the past few years (prior to the major decline in OU’s NMF population this year after the reductions made to its program upon the retirement of its former president, who was a big proponent of their program). The question is, how will the legislature respond? They can either fully fund the program going forward (which will be expensive, and will have always limited support since the benefits are going to OOS students who do not have financial need in order to raise the profiles of the schools, and arguably at the expense of in-state students with less stellar statistics but greater financial need – this is why no other state has a similar program!), reduce the funding, or kill it entirely for OOS.
The problem you have is that it is impossible to predict the outcome with certainty before we have even gone through one admissions cycle. This legislation was enacted so late in the game last year that very few people knew about it and were in a position to take advantage of it, so nobody knows what the costs are going to look like or how committed the legislature is going to be to funding it until next summer/fall, after they see the bill for next year. The budgetary process is a political one, merit scholarships are discretionary spending, and an OOS student on a full ride is not a constituent anyone is going to care about when cuts have to be made. On the other hand, grandfathering in current students would certainly be the right thing to do if there would be any changes going forward, and would be the outcome schools like UF would undoubtedly lobby the legislature for if the situation arose. Again, no guarantees, but, for what it’s worth, I think Florida has cut back educational benefits without grandfathering for its own residents in the past when there were funding shortfalls, but I’m not an expert on that. Perhaps a Florida resident knows for sure???
Yes, UCF has guaranteed theirs so we are happy campers.
Excellent summary, @NJDad00 ! I think it will still take a few years before the OOS Benacquisto costs get uncomfortable for the FL Legis, simply because even now it is not well publicized, and it remains to be seen how many NMFs are admitted to UF each year. I think that eventually the Legis will put a financial cap on the OOS program, and it will become a competitive scholarship. But that is just my uninformed opinion.
@vistajay – Thank you for the kind words! For what it’s worth, I found your frequent contributions last year to be very valuable in helping me help my kid navigate the process. Your predictions have been spot-on in the past, so I guess we’ll see. It’s just that people seem to LOVE the USNWR rankings, and this program provides for the #35 school to offer a full COA scholarship to these kids. The highest ranked non-Florida school offering anything comparable is Alabama at #129.
Like water finding cracks in a foundation, I just think parents and students chasing big money scholarships are going to find this, quickly, even with the lack of publicity by some of the schools. School counselors, private counselors, CC, friends, family, etc. will turn them on to the opportunity. I also do not think the program is adequately funded, even for the first year, based on information contained in the material accompanying the legislation last year. Maybe I am wrong and the program will slowly ramp up over time with adequate funding accompanying the growth. I guess time will tell whether I am right and, if so, whether more money is appropriated, cutbacks are imposed, or the program is killed.
If it becomes a competitive scholarship, what would that look like? Would the legislature set up a committee, like private foundations do, or would each school do it individually, even though they all have very different admission profiles? How would scholarships be allocated among the various schools, with UCF and FSU wanting as many NMFs as are willing to attend, and UF being indifferent to the credential? Would UCF and FSU fund NMF scholarships the state refused to fund, and, if so, why would the state fund any at all for them?
I personally think they will end up cutting it back like OU did, which will have the effect of killing it, as at OU, which saw its number of incoming NM Scholars decrease by 50% in the first year after its cutbacks. I just hope current recipients who were lured by the promise are grandfathered in, as happened at OU, instead of any cutbacks being imposed unilaterally, which is always possible with a political body dealing with an entitlement for non-constituents.
Again, only time will tell!
Some numbers that may help put the state funding situation into context.
This year, the Florida Board of Education (BOE) is proposing a $21.8B dollar budget. That includes a $673 million – or 3.5 percent – increase from the BOE’s 2018 K-12 budget. It will be paid for through a $503 million boost in school property tax collections (based on economic growth, not an increase in property tax) and a request for $170 million more in state funding.
The Florida Bright Futures scholarship, last year was budgeted for about $523 Million and goes to about 103,000 students.
The Benacquisto Scholarship (NMF) cost about $22 million a year and was projected for 1,100 students in 2018-2019 (90%+ will be in-state students). So, they are projecting less than $2 million a year (in 2018-2019) for OOS NMF.
Just as an aside, UT Dallas is now ranked at #129 as well with a full ride offered.
@GTAustin – Sorry for the omission! I scrolled down the list and stopped at the first big NMF school I saw that wasn’t in Florida. I missed the fact that 7 schools are tied at #129, including UTD, which definitely fits the criteria!!!
@Gator88NE – much more detail that I had!!! The actual number from the legislation was $1,236,404! You did an amazing job backing into a number that is really close to the actual number, while providing a much greater perspective on all of the educational demands on the state budget. This is exactly the point – a disproportionate amount of money goes to each student with the OOS Benacquisto as compared to the rest of the educational budget, adequate money wasn’t allocated with the legislation, and, when the bill comes in next year, they are going to have to decide whether or not to fund a very generous program that benefits non-residents. I think that fact that it was not funded on the front end raises a real question regarding their commitment to the program, beyond just passing it last year!
As the parent of a 2019 NMSF, I guess I would need some type of assurance from UF before allowing my kid to commit and pass up other guaranteed programs (UCF, UA) if he chooses to go with an NMF school. I realize UF brings a lot to the table but I would hate for him to get half way through an engineering degree and find out the rest would be full pay OOS. You guys are the experts — thoughts/advice? We are visiting UF in about a month. I am hoping maybe admissions will have an answer but maybe that is wishful thinking.
@mountainmomof3 If you’re touring UF on October, I highly recommend you do a College of Engineering tour. They have a limited number in October, but they can be done right after the normal morning admissions presentation/tour. We got far more out of the COE session than the standard admissions session.
https://www.eng.ufl.edu/students/students/prospective-students/visit-the-college/college-information-sessions/
Friday, October 5, 2018 1:15 pm-3:00 pm
Friday, October 12, 2018 1:15 pm-3:00 pm
Friday, October 19, 2018 1:15 pm-3:00 pm
Friday, October 26, 2018 1:15 pm-3:00 pm
I don’t think you are going to get a guarantee from UF. The NMF funds are coming from an outside source (Benacquisto) and UF doesn’t really have anything to do with it. In fact, you still have to be accepted to UF, and there is no guarantee that just because you are NMF you’ll get in. Probably will, but no guarantee. FSU and UCF are guarantying those student would continue to get FSU and UCF funds. UF doesn’t have those type of scholarships and UCF has a lot of them built into their programs. UF also doesn’t guarantee Bright Futures funds, and students lose those all the time because they don’t take the right number of classes or don’t keep the gpa. Again it is a state agency that runs BF, not UF or any other college.
Sometimes you just have to take a chance if you want to go to the top schools. Personally, I would look at U of South Florida in Tampa. Much nicer place to spend 4 years than any of the big 3.
@Gator88NE - unfortunately we couldn’t make it to one of their tour days but we did email the COE and we will meet with them on our own after the general admission tour. They were very helpful! S19 is definitely applying (just about ready to hit send on his app) but again reassurance on the financials would be important for us.