<p>Sigh... 2 threads. Anyways, I was wondering if people check here often enough to tell chances. If anyone is feeling very nice and warm around holiday time.... well here are my stats:</p>
<p>UW GPA-3.8
W GPA-4.0-4.1
SAT 1 Reasoning- 1960
ACT Composite- 33
SAT II's- U.S. History/Literature/Math II- 690/680/580(yuck)</p>
<p>Activities/Awards
-Won a city-wide competition in which I designed an advertisement for a local company that was then published in the newspaper.</p>
<p>Community Service: 250+ Hours
-At 2 different food shelters
-Local nonprofit television station
-Planting trees</p>
<p>Extracurricular Activities</p>
<p>-Varsity Wrestling 10th,11th,12th grades. Lettered all three years. Team Captain since 11th grade.
-Varsity Swimteam, 9th,10th,11th, 12th grades. Lettered since 10th grade.
-Japanese Language School since 6th grade, 3 hours a week, 40+ weeks a year.
-Piano- 9 years. Attend weekly lessons, practice daily, have performed on occasion at recitals.
-Guitar- 6 years. ^^</p>
<p>Work Experience
-For about 2.5 months, 14 hrs/week, worked at Japanese grocery store as meat+fish cutter.</p>
<p>i'm no expert, but i think you'll easily be admitted with the community service, awards, and gpa. my stats weren't nearly that good and i was admitted with a $8k scholarship last year</p>
<p>The FAFSA can't be done until the first of January. I would suggest you do this. Also, Santa Clara requires the PROFILE for finaid as well. Again, I would suggest you submit this also. You do not "apply" for FAFSA. The FAFSA is a document submitted to the colleges to help determine need based aid. Last year, the students who got scholarships at SCU were the ones accepted with distinction. You have as good a chance as anyone else applying to get an award. But even their scholarships are not huge. It costs over $40,000 to attend (including room and board), and the largest scholarship DD heard of was about $10,000 per year. I do think there are a few awarded that are higher than that. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>First off, thanks for that informative post. Anyways, what else do I need to do besides submit the FAFSA in January to receive scholarship money from SCU(and any college for that matter)?
Also, are there merit-based scholarships, because I dont think I qualify for need-based.</p>
<p>There are merit scholarships and they are based on your application. Last year, students accepted with distinction were awarded scholarships. Somoe of their SCU grants are also merit awards. You will need to complete both the FAFSA and the Profile (check for deadlines on both). As I recall, we also had to send SCU all 2006 tax returns, W-2 forms and 1099 forms for both DD and parents. Good luck to you!!</p>
<p>Scholarships for merit awards don't require any FAFSA if you aren't saying you have any financial need. As Thumper pointed out, you may qualify for more awards if you do complete the FAFSA & Profile. My S had a lower GPA than you but higher test scores & was admitted with substantial merit aid. I think you have a good chance.
He matriculated elsewhere & is every happy, but knows many kids who are happy at Santa Clara.</p>
<p>Again, thanks for the informative responses. A couple more questions.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>When should I have the FAFSA submitted by?(Have not started it yet)</p></li>
<li><p>HImom said "Scholarships for merit awards don't require any FAFSA if you aren't saying you have any financial need.".
I don't have any financial need in the sense that based on my family income I wouldn't qualify for financial aid. Is that what you meant by that? Sorry, I was just thinking that since everyone COULD use the money. Please correct me if I am mistaken. With that said, would it be within my best interested to apply for the FAFSA? Again, I strongly think that based on my family income levels I am not a "needy candidate", so I'm primarily if not solely aimed at merit-based scholarships.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Forgive me, I was a bit confused. I have a good idea but still looking for reassurance and closure.</p>
<p>Sorry if I worded it rather clumsily. Yea, I meant that if according to the formulas your expected family contribution will exceed the cost of attending the school (room & board + tuition & fees), it really doesn't make sense to submit the FAFSA & Profile (at least it didn't to me). I never submitted any financial forms but they awarded my son 1/2 tuiition + a $2000/year merit scholarship and invited him to apply to the honors college.</p>
<p>When I did some worksheets, our EFC was always much higher than the projected cost of attending all the Us our child was applying to, for the FAFSA. Never bothered with thr Profile, since I figured it would be more of the same.</p>
<p>So, yes, you can get substantial merit aid without submitting any financial aid docs to prove any need. It helped that my son was NMF & had very high test scores, even tho his grades weren't all that high (weighted about 3.7). His rank in his class put him around the middle of his HS class of 230 students.</p>
<p>You can submit the FAFSA and Profile using estimates NOW. Your estimates on income/taxes can be based on your last pay checks from 2006, or you can use the numbers from your 2005 taxes and just adjust those. Your assets are reported as of the day of filing (savings, checking, investments, etc). Then as soon as possible after Feb 1, complete your (parents and your) taxes for 2006. For the FAFSA you can go online and amend it to reflect the items from the 2006 tax return. The Profile needs to be printed out and hand corrected, and mailed. I would suggest that you do these forms as soon as you can. The deadline, I believe, is February 1. In fact, I will be doing my daughter's renewal FAFSA this weekend...and then I'll update it in a couple of weeks after completing my taxes. That is what the finaid office told me to do when I called them.</p>
<p>Yea, it's my understanding that once all the grant & scholarship money is handed out, that's all there is, so getting your forms in as early as possible is a very good idea, if you want any need-based funding. Thumper's strategy sounds very good to me.</p>
<p>for my input
you're definitely in....with a scholarship. i have similar stats and i was offered around 14k. i didn't fill out a fafsa either, btw.</p>
<p>DD was accepted EA. Her finaid package came in February, or March, I think. And she met the priority deadline of November 15 to apply for finaid (completed the Profile by then...submitted estimated FAFSA Jan 1...this was last year).</p>
<p>It was over a year ago, but I believe we got most of the initial merit aid with the acceptance and a bit more later. We didn't apply for nor receive any need-based award.</p>
<p>Thank you for the quick response. DS received his acceptance today. We were surprised because we didn't think we would hear until April 1st. There wasn't any mention of money. I know we will not receive any need-based, but was hoping for something..........</p>
<p>Also, IF your child is a student government leader in HS, you might ask the HS if they'd nominate your child for a leadership scholarship award with Santa Clara.<br>
Also, some Us will consider merit offers made by Us they consider "rivals." USC & Santa Clara were quite interested in the merit aid offers made by one another.</p>