I was recently accepted to Rider University for the spring semester as a transfer. I was awarded a Transfer scholarship of 22k and at the time I was pretty much sold on going to Rider so I accepted the award letter for my transfer scholarship but didn’t commit to the school or pay any deposit.
unfortunately, the school was a little too expensive to pay for and didn’t see the point of going anymore, so I applied to Penn State and got accepted.
my question is if I accepted the award letter for Rider University and am not attending, didn’t commit, or pay a deposit when I put in my financial aid information for Penn State will the scholarship automatically be granted to the school of my current choice.
I’m really worried that somehow that money will be stuck at Rider and not where I need it, at Penn State.
hope I explained this well, thank you to anyone who takes the time to answer this discussion, I’m super anxious!
Who gave you the scholarship? Was it from Rider or from an outside organization?
If it was from Rider, they are not going to pay for you to attend another school. If it’s from, say, a national society for supporting transfer students, you could ask them about the details.
Yeah, I should have clarified. I am attending a community college and the scholarship was merit-based for anyone who had the requisite grades and wanted to transfer. so the scholarship was given to me from my community college and I’m using that to help alleviate the financial burden.
It should probably be able to be applied to the bill at Penn State then, if it’s not tied to one specific school. Find out which office at the CC deals with that kind of thing and go ask them about how exactly it works – do you need to update something in their records now, do you need to do anything to make sure the funds are sent, etc.
Alright cool thank you so much, for some reason this issue just came to mind and I was freaking out. of course this would come on a Saturday when all of the offices for my schools are closed so I couldn’t get any info. thank you again! ill get the information and hopefully, everything is cleared up.
I am attending a community college and the scholarship was merit-based for anyone who had the requisite grades and wanted to transfer.
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Does this sound right? I’ve never heard of CCs having enough funds to give everyone with certain grades a $22k per year merit scholarship to be used wherever they transfer to. Where would the CC be getting that kind of money from???
What does your financial aid package from Penn State say? Every college sends its own award letter. The only grants that will appear in both are the federal Pell grant and state grants. Are you in state for either of those schools? OOS colleges are expensive and transfers don’t usually get a lot of aid. How much can your parents afford to pay?
I got the scholarship from Bucks County Community College. The thing with this scholarship is that some schools around the PA and NJ area take it so that’s why it showed the Transfer agreement for Rider but it is merit-based. ill post the link under this post.
the link above shows you the schools with a transfer agreement with BCCC (where I can use my merit-based scholarship.
if you click on the first school there, Albright you see this at the bottom, “Full-time Albright College day students with a final BCCC grade point average of at least 3.0 may be eligible for scholarships of $5,000-$20,000.”
I think you’re misreading the website. It looks to me like a list of colleges who have formal articulation agreements with your community college that cover what courses they accept from transfers. The link to each college takes you to a page with information about only that particular school. So the grants you see listed on the Albright College page are awarded by Albright and can be used only at Albright. The grants listed on the Rider page are awarded by Rider and are useable only at Rider. If you go to the Rider Univ. website directly, you’ll see they offer that $22k grant to all transfer students who meet those requirements, not just BCCC students.
Do you have a letter from your community college saying they’ll give you $22k/year? The tuition at BCCC is ~$5k/year. Where would they get $22k/year to give to each transfer student who earns a ~3.5 GPA?
@ari060 The above poster is correct. You did not receive a scholarship from your community college. It’s a Rider Scholarship usable only at Rider. Did Penn State offer you any financial aid?
Sorry guys, iv been trying to find this webpage that I remember seeing when I was at orientation for my CC. my advisor also told me that the scholarship in question can be applied to these schools (I’m assuming because the other schools offer it? I just have to follow the criteria) anyhow, unfortunately, I have to wait until tomorrow to get all of this information. Hopefully, they can direct me as to how this scholarship is given to me because I know for a fact that this scholarship is one of the main reasons I went to BCCC instead of a normal 4-year university or college. so I’m going to get back to you guys with that info, wish I could find that page. it literally had a break down of all the GPA’s and how much money each GPA gives the student towards their transfer. Sorry for the spotty info guys.
I knew going into BCCC as a freshmen that this scholarship was a thing but I didn’t know what school I was going to use it for, so it wasn’t like I was going into this with the purpose of only using it for Rider which means I was under the assumption that all schools within the agreement would take this scholarship if I achieved the requisite grades.
@ari060 Please report back once you get clarification. If there is a community college offering $22,000/year transfer scholarships, we need to spread the word to other students.
@itsgettingreal17 Absolutely, my guess is after all of the amazing post all of you have done on the matter is that the agreement with BCCC hinges on the colleges on that list to be willing to grant that scholarship to the student. BCCC is one of the best community colleges in the country from what I hear but it is very odd that a CC of all places would give this type of merit-based scholarship. Nevertheless, im going to get in contact with my advisor and school as soon as they get in the office and give the proper information. again, thank you so much for the posts and helping me out, really appreciate it.
The other schools DO offer transfer scholarships, but they aren’t BCCC scholarships that are being applied to the tuition of these other schools. The grants listed in those links are scholarships offered by those schools for use only at those schools. If BCCC could afford to give you $22k/year for a 3.5 GPA, why would they give you $22k to use at Rider and only $5k/year to use someplace else? Where does a school whose tuition is $5k/year get more than 4 times that, per student, to use at another school?
Go to the direct web pages of these colleges and compare the grants they list there to the ones listed on the BCCC website. If they’re BCCC grants, they won’t be listed on the financial aid websites of those other schools. Look on the BCCC website too. There’s no mention of a $22k/year transfer grant. If a cc could afford to offer that kind of money, they’d mention it somewhere on their site. I don’t think PA has that kind of money.