Son is #1 in high school class. Accepted to UCLA, UCI, UCD, UCSD.
Our AGI is over 275K.
Expected contribution is something like 85K.
That’s par for the course, right? It just felt odd sitting through his senior awards night and listening to all the $ the other kids got, a few got full rides, others got $50,000 + while being ranked much lower than our son. My son’s turn came, got a bunch of medals/honors, and zero dollar, Lol.
Thanks,
At my daughter’s high school award program I remember them touting all the small local scholarships some of the students received, like the type from the local credit union, etc. I do not remember them mentioning the high $ merit scholarship that my daughter received from the college she chose. You can’t get scholarships if you don’t apply for them, or get awarded them for merit or faculty choice, or whatever if they don’t choose you. Did your son apply for anything? It isn’t just financial need that determines scholarship winners.
Your son could have got $$ from somewhere but he didn’t choose to apply or attend those places.
But at this event, are financial aid amounts being listed? This seems awkward.
That income level and (presumably FAFSA-based) EFC suggests that need-based aid is extremely unlikely anywhere.
Competitive merit scholarships typically depend on how the student compares to other admitted students. UCs typicall do not have a lot of big merit scholarships.
You would not get financial aid at that income level. You might get a minor tuition discount if your kiddo added something the college desired and felt it would impact your decision. Also many of the public unis mostly the regional campuses have automatic merit for specific gpas and test score.
If your EFC is 85K, your expected contribution is 3x the cost of a UC (if in-state) so why would you expect any Financial Aid? Yes, very normal since UC’s give need-based aid and very little merit aid. Be thankful you have to the ability to pay for his college without taking out any loans.
If your son didn’t apply to schools that award merit aid, why is this odd to you?
ucbalumnus: that seems to be what happened. We looked into lots of scholarships at UCs, specifically UCLA where out son will attend, and even though many of them say “merit”, there’s always a need-based component in the fine print.
CheddarcheeseMN: Yeah, I was surprised to hear/see all the money amounts being announced, displayed with big cardboard checks, Lol. Some were only in the hundreds of dollars. One got full ride from the US Navy, the Marines gave something like $30,000 to one kid. Too bad I wasn’t able to persuade my son to apply to any of the Armed Forces Academies.
At the senior honors ceremony at our high school, they did announce the amount of the scholarship, but the students had to report it. One of my kids was invited so she and I attended, but the other child was not invited. A few kids were invited if the school was in charge of the awards (top 20 in the class, NHS awards), and a few schools (mostly local) reported their scholarships directly to the school those those kids were invited too, but otherwise it was up to the student to report any awards, which then triggered the invitation.
Every stinkin’ little $200 scholarship was announce that any student had reported. Made for a long night.
The schools are expecting you to pay for your son’s tuition, and part or all of someone else’s tuition as well.
We had our ceremony yesterday. And yes, they announced every single little award. they not only announced any money offered by any school (not just the one attended), but also all grants given for being needy. Fortunately, we don’t have but so many that go to college. And students had to turn it in. My beef this year was with the big local clearinghouse of “merit” scholarships. There are about 20-30 scholarships in the $1000-5000 range. Most have very specific criteria, but most are listed as merit based. They try to spread these out so nobody gets more than 1. Fair enough. But, this year they gave the top 5 GPA kids a $100-500 award - and that award then disqualified them from all of the others?! And then almost all of the recipients were not even honors kids. Need based was obviously the main factor. That would be fine if they had stated that upfront, so people would know not to bother with the very in-depth application process.
Our son did not get any monetary awards announced either. We did report his scholarships from schools he did not accept after year end with the award letters so that the counselors can have that info to use in future years.
Sadly, at a number if schools, people are not telling the truth so in order to use the info, the award letters are requested.
Although the awards are supposed to be merit money only, not financial aid, some of them looked mixed. I thinks some schools kind of mix the the two.
That is kind of weird. Our school does not disclose need-based aid. Merit funds are listed and tabulated tho.
Obviously, not all colleges are the same.
Generally, the big merit awards are from schools that are lower ranked than UCLA or in less desirable locations or both (not counting the service academies). And as some people have said, nothing was stopping your kid from applying to those schools and scholarships.
I find this very odd. Our high school has an awards night but none of the awards come with money. And the highest academic award is NOT given out at this awards night but is rather announced as part of graduation. So the highest-achieving students typically don’t even attend the high school awards night.
There is no announcing in any forum of scholarship or merit dollars. The only thing that is done that is even close is the production of a hard-copy Senior Map. This map basically lists the names of all the students and what schools they are attending, grouped by State and school.
My kids did not get any financial awards, even the one they applied to.
My kids’ school collects merit award info and it’s published/announced for awards ceremony, but dollar amounts are not listed. It does give some recognition to kids I otherwise would not know about in a large graduating class but otherwise I think it’s an odd thing to do.
One of my kids in particular had a very long list of merit scholarship awards. It had everything to do with her application strategy.She was applying to mostly private schools, hoping for large merit awards so she could afford to attend one of them. Comparing these between students isn’t particularly helpful. As you well know, an outstanding student accepted to several high level schools, such as your son, may have no merit awards but many fantastic schools to choose from.
D1 did get a merit award from school she applied to.
There’s no such thing as a scholarship at a service academy. Everyone goes for free. My S19’s school did something similar for a friend of his. The friend got into a school that does not give merit aid, need based FA only… but the school wanted to announce the fact that this child is going to a T20 so they made up a scholarship.
Your AGI is over $275,000? Did you expect your student to receive need based aid?
If needed, and you completed a FAFSA form, your son can take the Direct Loan each year. For freshman year, that’s $5500.
You are fortunate to be instate for his UC…congratulations on his acceptance.