So one question I have always had was how do you actually find full ride scholarships? I mean I see people getting these full ride scholarships to the UC schools, ivy leagues, and other prestigious schools, but when I look at the university’s website they don’t have those full ride scholarships listed so I don’t know what the requirements are for those scholarships. So how are we supposed to figure out what we need to do to get full rides? Thanks for any responses 
The best scholarships come directly from the schools.
Use this link for more information: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html#latest
Well of course you won’t find any full ride scholarship from the Ivy League because they don’t give any, all financial support is given in the form of need-based aid. As for other prestigious schools, you probably aren’t googling the right stuff or said people saying they got a full ride got a lot of need-based aid or a lot of need-based aid w/ small institutional scholarships.
https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/types-aid/scholarships-grants
As for the UCs, if I’m not mistaken, regents is the only thing close to a full-ride scholarship and the only requirement is to apply to the school(s).
http://financialaid.berkeley.edu/regents-and-chancellors-scholarship
Full rides are rare and if truly scholarships, as opposed to financial aid, will be heavily promoted by a school.
Read the links in this thread.
Actually there are folks who get full free rides at Ivy League schools, and other similar schools. However, these are need based awards, and would go to the student who meets that school definition of one who would receive full need based aid. Usually these are lower income students. But at some of these very generous schools, one can receive a full tuition award with a family income of $125,000 a year (e.g. Stanford) and typical assets.
Sometimes, it is also semantics. Some folks say full ride, and they truly mean full ride(tuition, room and board). Some people say full ride, but its really only tuition, which by the way is still really nice.
I am a person who had been on this quest for my son. He is a NMF, #1 at his school with 35 ACT and 800 on the verbal SAT and bio SAT II. 760 on SAT math.
If you want a full ride, you have to lower your expectations. There are schools that five automatic full rides to NMF but they are not top Universities. University of Maryland for instance gives out Banneker/Key scholarships but he wasn’t even a finalist.
You need to be significantly higher than the colleges middle 50 percentile.
Some “prestigious” schools are very generous with financial aid. Harvard asks for 10% of family income. (my guess is that someone told you that their award equaled full tuition and either you or they thought that was a “scholarship”) If the student is bright enough to be thinking “full ride” then you should explore the net price calculators at different schools.
@onceuponatime Not necessarily. Our son is attending on full scholarship but the scholarships he has are not heavily promoted. The admission scholarships are, but the additional dept and special scholarship awards are not. Since his university allows stacking of scholarships, multiple awards can add up to full scholarship.
People who say those things are confusing need-based and non-need-based aid.
Ivy schools give only need-based aid. The way to get a “full ride” to those schools is to be needy (and, of course, to get in!)
UC’s are almost all need-based aid as well, but there are a few exceptions. For example UCLA has the Stamps full ride which is not need-based.
Most notable full ride and full tuition non-need-based awards are compiled in lists on this forum.
And,
While I will agree that full-rides and full-tuition scholarships are kind of rare, my family’s experience has been different than both of these posts.
@onceuponatime, My kids each applied to many schools when it was their turn in the barrel. Each kid received a handful of full-tuition and/or free-ride scholarships from their various schools. In some cases, their full-ride or full-tuition package came from adding the totals of several stackable scholarships that were not heavily promoted by the school. And in two cases I can think of off the top of my head, their free-ride and full-tuition scholarships, which were single, in-tact scholarships, were NOT heavily promoted by the school!
@BobWallace, My family’s experience shows that there are several full-rides and full-tuition non-need-based awards that are NOT compiled in lists on these forums. And that’s just from the … maybe about 25 schools my kids applied to combined? Surely there must be plenty of others out there that my kids didn’t apply to. (I don’t have any confusion over need-based and non-need based aid, either.)
I’m definitely not going to disagree that full-rides and full-tuition scholarships are rare and very hard to come by. People who get them typically have extraordinary stats, or talents, or circumstances. But they do exist, and not all of them are compiled in lists on these forums, nor are all of them heavily promoted by the schools.
My answer to your question, OP, would be this, based on my family’s experience:
It seems to me, based on experience, that if two key factors are present, your odds for earning a full-tuition or free-ride scholarship are greatly improved.
(1) This first one is obvious. Have extraordinary stats, talents, or circumstances. Those are the traits that are generally awarded, let’s face it.
AND
(2) Apply only to schools that are a really great fit to YOU and YOUR personality and skill sets. Ignore what so many others tend to say about which schools are “the best.” Seek out the schools that are truly the best possible fit for what YOU bring to the table. If you are good at determining which schools are best fits for the whole package that is “you,” and if you apply to only those schools (be sure to include a financial safety or two), you will be setting yourself up for success. If your schools truly are a great fit for you, then you will be a great fit for them! And they will be more apt to lure you with scholarship offers.
And then, there’s a third fallback category that may help anyone, including those who do not have extraordinary stats, talents, or circumstances, but who have “good” or “great” stats, talents, or circumstances. And that is:
(3) Aim low. Still apply only to schools that you think are a good-to-great fit – you have to be able to see yourself happily there, or there’s no point – but aim lower. Find those lesser-known, lesser-bragged-about schools (that you like or love) in which YOUR stats, talents, or circumstances are exceptional. As somebody else mentioned above, you will need to be very significantly above the school’s middle 50th percentile in order to successfully compete for their scholarships.
The fact is, if you’re not bringing something fairly exceptional to the school, compared to their general student population, and if you’re not a great match for that school, your chances for big scholarships from them are terribly slim to none.
And, even if you’re an awesome asset to the school, with amazing stats, talents, and circumstances, you may not get ANY awards! Or maybe not any BIG awards. We know several people in that boat. For instance, the well-rounded number 3 and 4 students in my youngest kid’s high school graduation class of 800 got next to nothing by way of scholarships from ANY of the schools to which they applied! It’s a really great high school, too. Very competitive. But Number 3 and 4 (out of 800) that year got next to nothing. Personally, I think they should have broadened their nets a little. Their focus was too narrow, imo, and they went in too confident. I mean, they got accepted to handfuls of great schools – but they got very few scholarship awards, which rendered most of their schools unaffordable. It was really sad.
And finally, don’t rule schools out just because they don’t advertise big awards. If it’s a great fit for you, and if your stats far exceed the middle 50th percentile, apply anyway and see what happens. My kids each earned big awards that the never heard about prior to reading about them in their FA packages.
But most importantly, remember that big awards are a rarity. Do what you can to earn them, but be prepared to not receive them. Always, always, always have a good-fit financial safety in your hip pocket.
Best of luck to you! 
^ Of course, you should also search all possibilities for guaranteed scholarships – like NMF or schools who offer guaranteed amounts for certain stats. Most of those schools will be in lists compiled here on CC and/or they’ll be widely advertised by the schools.
I have no doubt this is true, which is why I said that most notable full tuition / full ride scholarships are compiled in lists here, certainly not all such awards at all colleges.
@SimpleLife if you know of these scholarships why don’t you add them to Bob’s list? The idea is to have a readily available resource for the CC universe.
@Erin’s Dad, for two main reasons. In sum, I don’t think revealing the details would be helpful or the right thing to do, and, more importantly, I’m a bit of a privacy freak, for myself and for my kids, though I do want to share what I can without revealing personal details. That’s the summary. If you want to know more, there’s all this, below.
First: Details, like the names of the scholarships, can help people put two and two together about my kids’ identity, and I’m a bit of a privacy freak. I don’t think it’s fair, as a parent, to discuss my own kids on the internet while calling out identifying details about them. In fact, I alluded to one of the kid’s scholarships long ago, in what I thought was a vague way, on that school’s forum, while my kid was attending, and at a Parents Weekend event, the mother of my son’s friend came up to me and said, friendly, but freaky, “I know who you are. You’re SimpleLife!” I was mortified! I had never met her before! Haha! She knew who I was because of something I said that I THOUGHT was fairly vague and innocuous. AND she said that she had it figured out by Christmas of freshman year! This was the end of sophomore year. And then she knew that everything else I said about him on the internet in the meantime, was about HIM. Yikes. We became friends … but I was mortified at the time.
I’ve gone deeper undercover since then and am generally intentionally vague about identifying details. It’s a choice.
Besides, that’s another thing that occurred to me when I first read the OP. I originally considered addressing it when I was thinking about how to respond, but then I forgot. Here’s the quote:
What I was thinking when I read that part is this: There’s really no need to know what the requirements are for those scholarships. We didn’t know of any requirements. We didn’t even know the scholarships existed. And yet they were awarded to my kids.
I’m just guessing that there are reasons that universities or departments don’t widely advertise certain scholarships or list eligibility criteria for them. For one, it’s possible that they don’t even have hard-set rules for who receives them. They may want to remain somewhat loosey-goosey about the criteria while they choose recipients based on some whole-person concept or something. I don’t know. It’s a guess. Also, my other guess is that universities, departments, donor families and individuals don’t WANT people adapting their essays and applications to what they might want to hear! Another guess. A good guess, I’m pretty sure. In fact, with one of the scholarships I have in mind, I’m almost certain that’s a fact. They want to choose the recipients based on what’s important to them at the time, not on a list of objective criteria, and/or they want to choose the recipients based on the person they have become and the consistency of accomplishments or criteria over time, not on an application designed to capture that award.
Those are just educated guesses. I think they’re pretty good guesses as to why the particular scholarships I have in mind are not published.
ALL of the kids I know who were awarded two particular scholarships I have in mind right now (from two different schools, I mean) are a certain kind of kid – genuine, honest, humble, accomplished. There didn’t need to be any criteria posted – the awards went to people who genuinely WERE those things.
That brings me to the second reason that I don’t add these scholarships to Bob’s list and why these particular scholarships remain somewhat invisible on CC:
Most of the kids I know who have received these, and their parents (I’ve gotten to know a few of them well), feel some sort of obligation or honor, and certainly gratitude, to those who awarded the scholarships. It feels icky and boastful and self-serving and destructive to even consider revealing them online. If those granting the scholarships kept (and keep) their details private, who am I to go about posting those details on CC?? One feels like an ungrateful traitor at the thought.
I have discussed this with a small handful of parents of recipients. We each feel the same way. We don’t tell other people that our students got these awards. The students don’t tell other people either. It feels self-serving and wrong.
The point is this: One truly has no need to know about these scholarships. If you apply to that school and you fit what they’re looking for, you’ll probably receive one. And if the awarding party chooses to keep them under wraps, then how is it my business to tell all? To me, that concept trumps this concept: “The idea is to have a readily available resource for the CC universe.”
In most cases, if a college offers a full ride scholarship your application is all that is needed to consider you. The problem is that you sometimes have to apply early to be considered, so sometimes if you apply early enough you can get a letter saying you’re being considered for XYZ scholarship and inviting you to a scholarship weekend or an interview.
In other cases, the way that you find out about it is visiting the Scholarships page of any college website. I’ve never visited a college website that didn’t have a page about scholarships (aside from the Ivies, who don’t provide any, but they do have Financial Aid pages). Sometimes the scholarships are on the Financial Aid page. But it’s easy enough - Googling “[school name] scholarships” should yield hits on the first page. That’s how I found about full ride scholarships.
I was a National Achievement Scholar, so I also found out about full rides through mailings (this was before email was the sort of thing that high school students had…lol.) Schools would purchase lists of NMF/NAF/NHF from the National Merit org, I suppose, and then send applications or catalogs with instructions for how to apply for their full scholarships for National Merit (usually you had to specify that they were your “first-choice” university or something). Other colleges just sent along scholarship information regardless of the NAS status, so maybe they got my scores from the College Board or something.
I agree with @SimpleLife’s general advice. You still need to be an outstanding student - the kind of student who could be competitive for top colleges. But if merit is your goal, you need to apply to a wide range of colleges - including several at which you are in the top 10-25% of applicants, depending on how competitive they are. Even the most outstanding student is much more likely to get a scholarship at Howard than Duke, for example, even though Duke does have some full scholarships if I recall correctly.
But don’t discount need-based aid. That was my mistake - in HS I didn’t apply anywhere that didn’t advertise big merit scholarships, and missed out on some schools that did, plus I was unaware that schools would also give my family need-based aid or a combination of merit and need aid. (First-generation college student, here.) So any school that you’d love to go to, apply and see what happens. I wish that’s what I had done, lol. The net result might be that your final list is kind of long, but going after merit requires casting a wide net.
Exactly. I totally agree. I am pretty certain that this was a big part of why my kids were so successful in their college application process, with admissions and with scholarships. They each cast a wide net. They each had at least one financial safety that was also a good fit. They each applied only to schools that they really loved and that truly fit them best. They each ignored the common mumblings about which schools were “best;” their schools had to be “good enough” (and were actually great). It turns out they did an excellent job picking where to apply – they seemed to know which schools fit them to a T. And, sure enough, the schools they applied to seemed to feel the same way!
Juillet, your post is the opposite of what we know of.
Full tuition and partial tuition scholarships are sometimes given based on the strength of your application, without a separate application.
Full rides very often take a separate application, and sometimes an interview process.
At many schools, their most generous awards require a separate application. At Boston University, for example, the Trustee Scholarship is a full tuition award. It is the most generous merit award given. It requires a seoarate application. The presidential scholarship which is partial tuition, is based on the strength of your application.
University of South Carolina has the McNair which is a full ride. Separate application (which is a doozie, and is also their honors college application). McKissick and Cooper Scholarships are based on the strength of your application.
I’m sure there are schools that give full rides based on strength of your application (as noted on the pinned bread above). But as you can see…not too many of those.
“Full rides are rare and if truly scholarships, as opposed to financial aid, will be heavily promoted by a school.”
Not always true.
sorry if I am repeating but I also want to stress that there is a real “terminology” issue on this subject. scholarship implies “merit”. Grant implies, financial aid. Ivies do NOT give scholarships. They do however give very generous grants.
When somebody says that they are going to an Ivy on scholarship, they may be telling a white lie, because they would rather not admit that they are receiving financial aid.
Disneydad…some of those Ivies list their grants as “scholarships” on the financial aid letter…but yes, they are need based.