Merit/scholarships for transfer/existing students?

Paying for College
1

<p>How frustrating - just typed out very long post and had to log back in!</p>

<p>Our financial situation has changed because my husband's position was "eliminated" last year - he recently started a new job but at about half the income of his previous position - so - 2 kids in private colleges, oldest has 3 semesters left, youngest just started his sophomore year and we have funds for about 4 more semesters set aside (we're short 3-4 semesters - or about 150K-200K). We pay 100% of both kids college costs and receive no aid of any kind. I also starting working as an independent contractor but I'm not making much after re-entering the workforce. Both kids always worked summers and the youngest just started working 10 hours/week on campus this year.</p>

<p>It would be great if he could get merit aid/scholarship where he is right now. He's a good student and loves it there - am I dreaming or is that a possibility? We don't want FA in the form of a loan.</p>

<p>Any suggestions on how to make up the deficit? They youngest was offered merit aid at a few schools but we were happy to pay the full ride so he could attend his first choice college where he was taken off the waitlist. Little did we know that our income would be cut in half as soon as he started his freshman year.</p>

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<p>For existing students, you should look for Departmental merit scholarships which are often available to continuing students. For transfers, go to the Transfer Students forum, Resources sticky thread, there’s a merit aid thread that is the most complete that I’ve seen (but it’s still very limited in the number of colleges and amounts of scholarships compared to fr admissions).</p>

<p>Hopefully the reduction in salary will at least result in an increase in FA for your family.</p>

3

<p>Thanks Entomom, We never applied for FA before but will try now.</p>

<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but is FA really just loans? If so, we won’t do it. I’d sell the house and downsize before I went into debt. (or had my child go into debt.), for tuition.</p>

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<p>Need based FA consists of grants, loans and work study. The proportion of each of these depends on the school (there are some schools that are no loan) and to some degree the student (preferred packaging for highly desired applicants). You can look at the Common Data Set for the schools your kids attend to get some idea of the average proportion of grants, loans and WS.</p>