D1 got her VT admission offer (non-engineering) in the Feb. 20 round.
Then she got her financial aid letter which gave her status (incorrectly) as OOS, with the corresponding $28k tuition.
We contacted the school and found that, even though we had filled out their questions correctly to show her Virginia residency as my dependent, they had her classified as OOS because they didn’t have proof that I was supporting her. (Their application questions did NOT ask for such proof, we provided everything they requested and they did not indicate anything more was needed until we contacted them about this error.)
So my question is, does residency matter for merit aid? Are they any more likely to offer scholarship money to a resident than to an OOS applicant? And when did, or will, they determine the scholarship offers? I’d hate to think she missed out on money by them not telling us we had to send in additional paperwork first.
My son has gotten merit aid offers from all out of state schools so far. I believe they do this to make themselves competitive with the in state schools. My son did not get a merit aid offer at VT where he is in-state. I doubt you can switch from OOS to IS and still have a valid acceptance offer. The application acceptance bar is much higher for in state than it is for OOS. The merit offer would also likely be rescinded.
Of course her acceptance is still valid. VT was always an admission and financial safety for her.
If there were any difference between admission decisions for IS and OOS, it is the OOS applications that would have to meet the higher bar. Otherwise a student could apply and not indicate that she was IS, if it were easier to get in as an OOS applicant, and then simply prove her IS residency prior to the first day of class. To suggest it’s harder for residents to get in to a public school than OOS applicants is ridiculous.
In reality, VT does not appear to be overwhelmed by OOS applicants, and does not appear to use different standards.
She claimed IS residency on her application; they accepted her without asking for verification, but had then listed her as OOS. We contacted them and verified her residency, and VT has now explicitly confirmed that she is in fact a resident. “[D1]'s status has been changed to in-state for tuition purposes.”
But the question was not about admission. The questions were about whether merit aid (scholarship) money is offered any differently between IS and OOS (e.g., is there state money available, earmarked for residents?), and when do they make the determinations of what to offer (i.e., does the delay take her out of consideration for IS money?).
In truth, I hope they don’t offer her any merit aid. The entire and only purpose of merit money is to persuade a student to attend that school instead of a “peer” or “superior” school. I would much rather she attend UVA or W&M, however.
This happened to me at 2 of the colleges I was accepted to out of high school (VCU and ODU) and then again when I was transferring to Tech. Even though my FAFSA and application indicated me as in-state and everything about me was in-state, all of the financial aid offices put me as OOS and required verification. I inquired why this happened at both VCU and VT, just got the answer that some students have to go through additional verification for some things. I got a corrected financial aid award at VCU as a freshman after fixing my status which updated to included state specific aid.
The Financial Aid office is most likely the only place at Tech where your student was identified as OOS. From what I was told as a student, most departmental scholarships go off of information on their own applications or the admissions application, which has an IS address in your case. Most of the scholarships distributed through the Financial Aid office are merit+need based or have a specific application where your student would have indicated IS status while applying, so they probably don’t affect your student.