Florida NMF Scholarship for Out of State?

Paying for College National Merit Aid
21

@twoinanddone - totally understand about UF admissions. I think stat wise he is fine (ACT 36, SAT 1570, uwGPA 3.98) and more leadership, community impact and EC’s than can easily fit on his application. His essay seems solid but I am his mom so just a little biased! :wink: However, we are OOS and we have seen others last year with very high stats not get admission. Who knows?

For NMF schools, he loves UA and their engineering department. If there are no UF guarantees for the NMF $, it may be a deal breaker for him even IF he is admitted. But he will definitely apply and we will visit and see what they say.

Thanks to all of you for the insight!

22

@mountainmomof3 --@twoinanddone has it exactly right. I was in your position last year, I asked the question at UF, and the answer was that there was no answer. UF has lobbyists in Tallahassee, they care about their students, yada yada, but they can’t make guarantees.

Everyone agrees that it would really suck if a commitment was pulled by the state midstream without grandfathering in current recipients, and I think that would be unlikely but not impossible. I have heard that funding for Bright Futures has fluctuated up and down over the years, but i do not know whether downward revisions affected everyone or only future recipients. I am also not sure how relevant that is one way or the other, since Bright Futures recipients are all in-state, and therefore constituents of those making the decisions, while OOS Benacquisto recipients are not.

If you would only go to UF because of the money, then, yeah, it’s hard to do that with no guarantee, which they will never give you. On the other hand, if your kid really loves the school, it might be worth taking a chance, since it is more likely than not that downward revisions would only affect future students, due to what I would consider a moral obligation to those who accepted a 5-year full COA scholarship.

Again, the caveat to that is you are dealing with OOS politicians who might not care about a moral obligation to you regarding a benefit so generous that no other state in the country offers it to its own residents, let alone those for OOS. Unfortunately, even though you would be right, you could never successfully sue either the state or the university if the program was terminated prior to graduation, because the legislature would have sovereign immunity and the school never made a promise or commitment to you. Finally, I would also hope that UF would mitigate any future impact if the legislature pulled the plug on you midstream by at least continuing to waive OOS tuition and fees (which they are required to do as part of Benacquisto) which would be huge if you had to start paying.

As far as advice, goes, it’s a very personal decision that carries some risk either way (either turning down #35 in favor or #129, turning down a possible great “fit” for a less good one, or getting stuck with a bill when you thought you had a full COA scholarship), so I’m not comfortable purporting to give you expert advice as opposed to just sharing the knowledge I picked up over the past year to help you make a more informed decision, while trying really hard not to steer you one way or the other.

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@NJDad68 - thanks! All of the above prompted our plans for the trek from CO out to visit soon. It is hard to make a reasonable decision without visiting and exploring. If admitted, it would be an amazing opportunity to consider. Thanks again for the insight!

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@mountainmomof3 – My pleasure! :slight_smile:

You are doing exactly the right thing by making the investment, in time and money, in in-person visits. I did that with my DS during school breaks his sophomore and junior years, and pulled him out of school for way too many days senior year so that he could see lots of different schools and have lots of choices.

You simply cannot make a mistake as long as your kid ultimately finds the right fit and feel, and the school has decent programs in whatever your kid thinks is of interest going in (with the caveat that many kids change their minds multiple times during the ensuing 4 years!). Literally dozens, if not hundreds, of schools fit this criteria for most kids. The trick is narrowing the field down and making choices. If they come with a big scholarship, you are way ahead of the game for grad school. If not, as long as you can afford the cost, it is an investment in a future and will pay dividends. If you can’t afford the cost, due to NM you have several good choices where costs will be at or close to zero, or else very reasonable.

Good luck. It’s a very anxious and exciting time, but I promise you that your kid, like everyone else whose parent is on top of this like you are, will have many excellent choices, will end up exactly where s/he belongs, and by this time next year, if you have nothing better to do, you will be breathing many sighs of relief as you hang out here sharing your wisdom with those coming up behind you!!!

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For you OOS NMFs looking at Florida colleges, you may be interested in how we Florida locals view our various colleges. Using the data in the June 6, 2018, NMSC publication of the college-sponsored NM scholarships for Florida residents, over 70% of the Florida students who received a college-sponsored NM scholarship selected to attend UF. For the other colleges, 12% selected UCF, 6% selected USF, and 5% each selected FSU and Miami. UF does not aggressively market itself to NMFs, but it’s reputation within Florida attracts the most Florida NMFs nonetheless.

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UA is a very appealing school for an OOS student. My DD14 (Industrial Engineering) applied to UF, UA and UCF. She was accepted to all three, with UA being the best finacial option, even with her being in-state for UF/UCF (with Bright Futures). If she hadn’t been accepted to UF, she would have chosen between UA and UCF.

You’ll need to balance risk vs reward for your family. Some other items to consider.

You can use ASEE engineering profiles to compare engineering programs.

http://profiles.asee.org/

This is especially useful for determining which majors are offered, how many students are in each program/major, and how many faculty members support each program.

LinkedIn is very useful for seeing where Alumni live and what companies they work for. Search on the University, selected Alumni, and then select Engineering. For example, the #2 location for UF Alumni engineers is the San Francisco Area where about 8% of Gator engineering alumni live and work. LinkedIn also will list the top employers. UF is well recruited nationally.

Here’s a link to the companies/recruiters attending UF’s fall career fair:
https://career.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Fall-2018-Career-Showcase-Directory.pdf
It gives a good idea of the companies that recruit on campus. Note that several companies skip the career fair and have their own dedicated sessions on campus. Yesterday, SpaceX had my son (DS17) and his friend run around campus handing out flyers.

Several schools (including UF) will also have dedicated “career fairs” for each engineering department.

Some schools also put out Graduation Survey results. At UF each student has to complete the survey, before graduation (some schools due it up to 6 months after graduation). UF has a nice website to search the data. You can select major (like Mechanical Engineering) and review the results. Keep in mind that UF only surveys the students once, before graduation, so many are still searching or making up their minds about grad school. The survey is also a useful tool to view Salary info and Employment destinations.

Good Luck!

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@Gator88NE - extremely helpful! Thanks!

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Since this is a “Florida” discussion and not a UF specific discussion…

A few more examples…

Using LinkedIn and looking at UCF, you’ll see it’s engineers tend to be more regional that UF grads, but are still recruited out west. 44% of UCF’s Alumni working in Engineering live in the Orlando area. About another 8% live in the Melbourne Florida area (space industry). By far the number one employer is Lockheed Martin, which has a major presence in the Orlando area.

At USF (another NMSF school), by far the largest group of engineering Alumni live and work in the Tampa/St. Pete area (43%). FSU has the smallest group of Alumni of the Florida schools, but they are more spread out through the state and country. Atlanta is as popular a destination as Tampa/St. Pete and Orlando (NY, San Francisco and Washington DC are not much less popular).

A quick look at UA, we see they have the fewest Alumni working in engineering (UA’s enrollment increase is a recent event). By far, the top 4 locations are Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Huntsville and Atlanta…

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Duh, forgot to include UF’s graduation survey results link:

https://career.ufl.edu/student-outcomes/

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Eye opening for sure. Thank you all.

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When S18 decided to take the OOS Benacquisto to FSU, it helped that FSU said they would fund it themselves if the legislature ever reduced or eliminated it, but we also determined that he could still afford the school even under the worst possible scenario. He already qualified for many other scholarships at FSU that brought the cost of attendance down to a manageable level, and he could probably pick up some additional scholarships as well. If we had been facing no scholarships at all other than OOS Benacquisto, and OOS tuition, I suspect he would have attended one of the other schools where he had more certain scholarship funding.

If the FL Legislature has allocated less than $2 million for OOS Benacquisto, that’s only about 90 OOS NMF students for all participating FL schools. Perhaps that is close enough for 2018ers, but as the program becomes better known it certainly would not be.

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@vistajay – As I mentioned in an earlier post, the actual number was significantly less than $2 million ($1,236,404), which corresponds to around 56 scholarships as opposed to 90! While I might be mistaken, I think that 56 was based on the number of OOS NMFs at places like FSU and UCF in the Class of 2021. The allocation shouldn’t be far off for the Class of 2022 because the legislation passed too late last spring for most OOS folks to either know about it or be able to take advantage of it.

The real fun will be next spring when the program explodes in popularity due to lots of OOS students being attracted to full COA at UF and a very generous automatic merit scholarship at UM. I personally think the 56 could easily jump to around 500. Whether or not the legislature steps up with funding next year, the true test of its commitment will be when it receives the bill over the following three years as the annual cost of the OOS program doubles and doubles again as four classes of scholarship recipients enroll.

The OOS program really does seem too good to be true insofar as: (i) it will be really expensive for the state; (ii) primarily benefits students who are not eligible for need-based financial aid; (iii) are not residents of the state; (iv) is not offered in any other state; and (v) can be used at some relatively highly ranked schools whose peers do not offer anything comparable. It just seems inconceivable that it will exist in its current form four years from now. Hopefully, any changes made in the future will not impact students who enter the program before they are made.

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Does anybody know if out-of-state national merit scholars should bother applying for need-based financial aid since they would be getting a full ride anyways? Or would the need-based aid stack on top of the Benacquisto?

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No FA will not stack on top of merit unless you still have a need. Since Benacquisto pays full cost of attendance, it would be hard to show any additional need to receive FA.

35

@ericy135 I agree with @vistajay but some Florida schools (for example, UCF) want their scholarship recipients to fill out the FAFSA anyway.
Check with each school for their requirements.
For reference, from the UCF national merit scholarship page:
"National Merit Scholarship Program Requirements:
Recipients of this scholarship program should make note of the following:

Required Form:
The processed results of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) must be received at UCF by June 1 each and every year. To allow time for unforeseen processing delays, it is strongly recommended that students file the FAFSA no later than April 15 so there is ample time for the processed results to be received by UCF."

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We didn’t have to fill out FAFSA for my son’s second year at FSU. Happy to have a break from that form for a few years, until my S22 applies to colleges.

37

Can someone clarify - this is only for NM Scholars, correct? So, one has be chosen by the National Merit Corporation for their award OR be selected as such by a corporation who provides NM Scholarships. This is NOT automatically available for National Merit Finalists? Am I understanding that correctly? I can’t remember when NMSQT names their scholar designations??

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@Hoggirl - my understanding is that this is for finalists whether they make it to scholars or not. I guess technically by receiving this scholarship they are considered scholars? @vistajay - can you chime in?

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FWIW - S19 and I are going to visit UF and UCF in about a week and a half. Should we even bother trying to pin down UF on what will happen if Benacquisto funding dries up once a student is enrolled?

Any other tips, pointers for our visit? S19 is fplanning on engineering so that will be the main focus at both campuses.

40

@Hoggirl , a student is also NMS if they receive a college sponsored NM award. If you are a NMF admitted to one of the eligible FL schools, the school gives you a small NMF award, like $500. Then you are considered NMS and receive the Benacquisto. So basically, if you are admitted as a NMF, you will get the Benacquisto, as it is currently implemented.