I know you asked for information on outside scholarships, and we are all veering back toward suggestions of colleges that might be affordable for you. But that is because it is somewhere between totally impossible and ridiculously unlikely to find an outside scholarship that will cover the $320,000+ you would need for 4 years at a school like Brown or Yale (since it does not look like you will qualify for any financial aid with your family income).
There are schools that are not in the south that NMF will get you free/affordable education. If you count Tulsa as not the south it has a great package, even if you are only NMSF and donât make NMF. UMaine has a pretty good deal (definitely not the south!), Arizona as others have said. Fordham has a good package for NMF which isnât guaranteed, but they say on the website 70% of NMF are offered it. You could try for USC (Southern California not South Carolina) which has a half tuition scholarship for NMF if you get in.
You can get a great education and find a group of peers that you will enjoy and will challenge you at many schools that you will be able to afford.
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Here are the merit ones that I am familiar with that pay full tuition (or more) for a US college, but they are SUPERcompetitive:
Does your school have a list of scholarships? My studentâs school sends a monthly email with scholarships, some of which are merit aid with no need criteria.
Again, these are really tough to get, but they are out there.
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Fordham was mentioned, but keep in mind that they have one of the highest R&B costs. It is currently >$21k/year.
For the right student, ROTC is also an option. It is still competitive.
I agree that the scholarship search engines weâve tried are a sham - mostly lotteries designed to obtain your email address so it can be resold at a profit. If you have the bandwidth to put in some time to accumulate small-dollar awards, you might try local community organizations like womenâs clubs, fraternal groups such as Elks/Rotary/Lions/Masons, booster clubs at local schools, and (if you are so inclined) religious organizations. Many of these offer modest awards, say $500 to $2000, with minimal effort and no interview required. My daughter pieced together $4k for her freshman year from a womenâs league, a chamber of commerce, and a choir alumni group at her high school. OTOH, she also wasted a ton of time on a competitive scholarship process through some national non-profit org that required multiple interviews, a long original essay, etc. etc. but only offered two awards of $2500 (which she didnât get). Lesson learned. The ones that award to many different recipients in a local area, not just one or two students regionally or nationally, are usually better bets in this scenario.
The problem, as I think you realize, is that it would take so many of these little local awards to make a meaningful difference in paying the COA at a private school that it may not even be worth your time. But there are so few really big outside scholarships, and they are insanely competitive. Thatâs why so many posters are drifting back to suggesting colleges with big merit aid, and I tend to agree - thatâs probably your best chance.
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