Some of the schools suggested have 10 minute applications with no essays - Alabama (and UAH, UAB (hockey! although not a women’s NCAA team)), Wyoming, Colo School of Mines. Sometimes they even offer free applications. Those can be submitted without much time commitment.
I think if your $20k per year budget is firm, there are a lot of schools you can take off your list. Run the NPCs. If you find one way out of whack, call the school but you aren’t going to get much information. If you couldn’t get info as an athletic recruit at Middlebury, you aren’t going to get the personal touch at other schools. Believe the NPCs, research the merit scholarships, but if the money’s not there, move on.
Scholarships like Stamps are very hard to come by. It’s fine to try for one, but have some safeties that she really likes on her list. The western flagships like Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana offer great merit or WUE. My daughter graduated with $22k in loans from Wyoming, and she did not have the top merit awards (your daughter would). Her grants and scholarships paid her billed costs, and she paid $4k per semester for room and board (to her on campus sorority). It’s really very cheap. Hockey was $150/sem - by far the cheapest I’d ever paid for hockey, even when she was 8 years old. It’s just a club team and just for fun, and it is fun.
Society of Women Engineers is a clearinghouse for scholarships for, you guessed it, women in engineering. I think the deadline for freshmen is in February and decisions aren’t made until May, after regular decision. More forms to fill out, more letters of recommendation needed.
Look up the scholarship path taken by @CourtneyThurston She made the decision to ‘follow the money’ and didn’t go to an elite school but did graduate with money to spare.
Airline employee free standby is more usable when flights are not full. If flights are full, that may mean no seats available. Flights in or out of a small airport in a college town may be more full when semesters start and end, for example.
Stamps scholarships at various colleges are highly competitive. Treat them as high reaches.
The chances for full tuition sized scholarships are very very low at most schools. That’s one of the things you need to research. Unless it’s a great match , for your DD in some unusual way, scholarships with ridiculously low chances may not be worth the time. It’s difficult getting the information for some of these awards as sometimes numbers likev100-200-300 or large dollar amounts are cited , but nowhere does it say that only 1-5-10 students get the full ride, full tuition , large dollar amounts.
I have no doubt your DD will get merit $s But these days $20-30-40-even $50k awards for some private colleges still leaves an appallingly large amount left with some schools coming in at $80k COA.
You have some great information from all of the above posters. I do disagree with them on one note. I say let your kid apply broadly to many schools. Yes, it is a lot of work but when you are chasing the money, it can be well worth it. My kid applied to 32 med schools when she was in college and had to do all the work for each application. I don’t see what the difference is in the OP’s kid applying to 25 UG’s.
Yea Stamps scholarships are very competitive. But this is a competitive applicant. And depending whichnschools she targets, she may be a strong candidate.
@CottonTales most medical school applicants apply to over 20 medical schools because they really have no idea what their chances for acceptances are.
This student has some sure things for acceptance and scholarship based on her stats. She cannot attend an undergrad school where the net cost including her student loan will be over $20,000 a year. Her parents earn too much for need based aid at many places.
It’s better to vet the application list NOW than to apply to unaffordable options especially given that there have been listed here a ton of affordable ones.
Since cost is a huge factor, this family needs to consider that first, it seems. Sure, apply to some of the reach schools…but 20? No.
Find several reaches, maybe double that in matches, and then several sure things. The more that are affordable, the better.
In California, there are increasing numbers of high stat kids who are getting into their UC’s and the competition for scholarships continues to be tough. My former students can attest to this. NHRP scholarships and the HSF monies are usually based on need and typically have a hispanic composition requirement/EC activities. There are multiple applications that require legwork and going from one registrar to a counselor to a VP or Principal to several teachers and EC supervisors is a hassle for each application. It’s not cut and dry.
OP, the application process for multiple scholarship applications is very trying for the counselors. After a while, they will write the same generic thing over and over again and can actually diminish your child’s chances at scholarships or admissions. Your child isn’t the only high stats child in her class, and filling out 25 counselor statements, on all manners of applications and all manner of questions, gets old very fast. Our high school counseling staff tried hard to help all of our top students, but when some requests were ridiculous, late and pushy and “just had to be submitted before the weekend”, the counselors were not motivated and were easily frustrated. Don’t do this to your child. If you need money this badly, and can’t make a decision, have her attend CC at Santa Monica and then have her transfer in order to save some money.
I’m not trying to be a killjoy, but I do think you aren’t thinking through some things.
I worked for an airline for many years. Your wife is a flight attendant, not the CEO. Trying to fly standby at Thanksgiving break, when all the other students and regular people are also flying home for Thanksgiving, is very likely to end up with a student not getting on a flight. T-giving break is usually pretty short, and it’s also a real drag to be stuck on campus on your own when everyone else is not there during a major holiday. At Christmas time, many colleges totally shut down, as in, they even turn off the heating. Not a great idea to assume standby during holidays will work out.
Your D can apply to only 20 colleges via the Common App, btw. Beyond that, she will have to apply to schools that aren’t on the Common App. And it will be critically important that she maintains her high grades. It’s also pretty important that she doesn’t go grey at the age of 17 and has a little spare time to enjoy her senior year and not be totally stressed out.
Medical school is somewhat different in that all US medical schools are reaches or high reaches for all applicants, so applicants apply to 15-40 medical schools in hopes of getting one admission.
For many students applying to undergraduate, including the OP’s student, it is likely that there are some potential safeties (e.g. for the OP’s student, University of Arizona, Arizona State, commuting to UCI, Tuskegee, PVAMU), so there is less pressure to apply to a huge number of reaches and high reaches to try to get one admission.
The student probably does not have any matches, except perhaps UCI. Because she otherwise needs at least a full tuition merit scholarship, these are either reaches (if competitive) or safeties (if automatic for her stats or NHRP).
I’m also interested in @browniesundae 's experience with speaking to the FA or Admissions office. Very useful stories, but there are probably as many, if not more, situations where asking for more money yields zilch.
My D was accepted to a selective college that offered merit awards for a very small number of students. We thought there was no harm in seeing if they would perhaps be able to offer her a small amount of money based on an unexpected large expense, and we explained that the school was her top choice. No dice.
On the flip side, our son was offered a very nice additional scholarship when we called the admissions office about it, but that was only after he had completed an additional three essays and submitted another rec from his high school. He didn’t attend that school in the end. I think much depends on how desirable the student is and how much money they have left to hand out.
If your daughter ends up juggling lots of different offers and awards, and you try to get more money, it’s possible you might miss out when there are too many choices. Waiting to hear back from colleges about this stuff takes time. While she’s waiting to hear from College A, College B might have handed out whatever cash they have to students who deposit very quickly. And College A might come back with nothing extra.
This is one reason why she should show interest, submit strong supplements, and be ready to jump on an offer to a school she’s really interested in. You can of course always ask a college to match another offer, depending on various factors. That’s a different thread.
I think I’d definitely prioritize a very long list of schools for competitive scholarships. My middle D applied to seven LAC competitive full tuition/full ride scholarships as a high stats student with lots of strong leadership and nice ECs. Another two school’s with basically automatic scholarships. It definitely was a lot of work, a lot of essays-every school has a different prompt, or two or three. It was exhausting for her. Many had short deadlines. Almost all required early applications, October and November deadlines. She had to travel for interviews,a Dan meet a bunch more reps locally. She missed a lot of school spring semester. She did get one of the seven competitive scholarships and was a finalist for three. Our safeties were two of our state universities with auto merit.
The other hard thing was not being sure anything but the local safeties would actually pan out financially after all that crazy effort. That was extra stressful for our D but she went in understanding the odds.
One of the schools where my D was a finalist for a full ride said during their scholarship weekend that they had 500 applications for the 10 scholarships awarded. This at a rural top 50ish LAC with fewer than 1500 students total. The 30 finalists were very, very impressive kids. The big scholarships at tip tip schools are going to be even more competitive than this.
It can be done. All three of my kids have or are attending college (and lived on campus) on your budget with big merit scholarships, no loans or need aid. The two grads made the most of their opportunities. Study abroad, nice internships, an REU at a top 20 school, and great post-grad jobs doing exactly what they had hoped. One graduated in three years, the other in four with a bachelors and masters, in engineering.
I’d strongly recommend really thinking through that list and use the application time and energy wisely.
The important thing with merit money and, particularly state schools, is get that app in early!!! I’m talking September even. There are kids and parents each year astounded that they are “late” when they beat the deadlines by months. Engineering and other such programs fill up fast. They don’t take Einstein even when they fill up, let alone pay for someone to come there.
I agree that the OP’s DD has a strong application for merit money. It’s just that the competition is fierce for those full tuition awards. I believe Georgia Tech’s big scholarship app is due in October. Delaware only invites the top applicants who have acceptances in hand by a certain date for their Top 100 scholarship weekend when the big awards are given out.
Get that Alabama app out and that acceptance in hand. I think there is an additional $2500 engineering award that might be in the picture there. Once there are some birds in hand, the pressure lightens up. Look for EA schools in the bunch as your DD completes the Rolling Applications which HAVE to be done early for best chance of money in a number of cases.
In the end, it’s up to your DD and the school counselor when it’s enough. You can see when diminishing returns starts to hit. Airline privileges will be a great benefit, but that first Thanksgiving or Christmas or other dates that give a very narrow window of time still might mean paying for ticket. Old Murphy and Law still reigns. I’ve known parents who missed Family weekend waiting for a standby seat. You might get a preview of how it works when scholarship weekends and other things come up this year where you, spouse along with DD should show up. For starters, look at Alabama, get that tour if it’s a good likelihood for your DD instead of it being a pig in a poke “just in case”. You’ll be impressed, I’m sure, and it gives you an idea how some out of state and previously out of mind schools are great options. It also gives your DD a strong first step and accept. She can start apps and see how far she can go before wearing self and/or GC out. Usually the school and GC statement is once done and the admin assistant just sends off copies as needed to however many schools as requested— we had no issues with that part.
Take a look at “notes from Rochester visit” on the University of Rochester board here. This gives you a good idea of what it may take at some schools for acceptance, let alone big merit money. The parent emphasizes what the school has made clear is important. It also shows how any outside and merit awards are applied to financial aid, and how loans and self help are integral to the process.
You will need to research the Common Data Set for each school. The CDS tells you how much non-need aid is given out and the average award. If this number is low, then take the school off the list.
Alabama probably is not affordable unless the student retakes the ACT for a 36. Probably need to look at Arizona, Arizona State, Tuskegee, and Prairie View A&M for this purpose. See reply #75.
@txstella When you’re looking for a big merit award (full tuition - full ride), average merit awarded is irrelevant and possibilities shouldn’t be crossed off based on the average. The big awards are few in number.
One of our family mottoes is," know what you want, don’t just tell me what you don’t want" You seem to know your budget, but not your parameters around the program. Also, when the acceptances are too broad it will become impossible to decide. As someone noted above, you won’t have the full picture so will be guessing which one is likely to be best. Geez, I sure wish they would limit the common app to 5 ( would make all that wait list and other stuff change dramatically).
Since your daughter doesn’t care which Undergraduate program it is, it seems like you just need a solid package. Based on many CC discussions, it does seem like there are many stellar kids who need this also. And the numbers of scholarships are tiny compared to the need. I tend to be someone who over researches but this discussion has given me pause. When it’s time to apply, our student is not going to be applying to dozens of schools. Makes me think more about ruling out schools now. Back again to knowing what you want ( and keeping reality in check-so not wanting to attend an Ivy or bust).