Hello! I have been interested in the Questbridge program for a few years now. While I was living with my mother full-time, I definitely qualified for the scholarship financially. However, she recently passed away and I now live with my father full-time, who makes ~80k/year for a family of two. We have a few medical bills (surgeries, etc.), but nothing too extreme. He does not have any other assets outside of his income. I am the one who will be paying for my college education fully - I do not expect him to contribute to my tuition.
Should I even bother applying for the Questbridge scholarship?
While I wish I could tell you to go for it, I honestly don’t know if there’s much of a point. The program is specifically for low income, and you make about $15k over the limit. Unless you have a family of over 4 people, where the cutoff is about 95k (so you’d be good). I’m sure many kids are in your situation where their parents won’t help pay for college, so I don’t know it that will help. Maybe email QuestBridge and ask? I’d personally probably start looking at other scholarship opportunities and ask your dad if he’d be able to contribute financially at all. But overall, there’s no harm in trying, and if you don’t get in, you’ll have a head start on the Common App.
Is that his adjusted gross income? Or his gross salary or revenue? The relevant figure is the adjusted gross income (AGI), which is less than total/gross income. He can find that number on his IRS 1040 form.
Run the NPC on some colleges from the Questbridge list, LACs in particular. 80k is too high for Questbridge but if you have the stats and apply ED to a generous, full-need LAC you would likely get a near full ride.