@CS2GO - yup, for the UCs it’s normal. Some schools would have given your son merit scholarships but it sounds like he just didn’t apply to any of those. My two Ds went to Catholic high schools and I know they wanted to hear every bit of money students recieved so they could publish the total in scholarships won by the class but I don’t think they announced them by student.
But that doesn’t stop them from announcing at every event that it is a scholarship worth (at that time) $480k! It was announced at the senior awards, at the athletic awards and at graduation. It was the ONLY ‘scholarship’ announced at graduation.
Also, at our awards night when they announced the amounts, they didn’t say if it was for 1 year or 4 years. There were a lot of small $500 one-time awards, but some of the $25000 ones were for each year, so were really $100k scholarships.
None of the NMF were named and no Bright Futures scholarships either. Now (but not then) NMF get full COA scholarships but I doubt they are announced. As I said, a strange night.
Ours lasted FOREVER. Every scholarship listed, even to schools not attending. Although they had to self report most of them. S20 had a nice scholarship last year but we didn’t report it since he was going elsewhere. We are definitely in the minority.
S19 is headed to an Ivy, along with one other student plus one to Duke. No mention of that. GC did ask me to let her know what his grant was called and how much, but I didn’t feel the need to put a number in the program that lets anyone reverse engineer my income. The actual grant # has been shared with a pretty small number of people. I maybe should have given her something with the name on it, but I was afraid she would attach an amount to it so I didn’t give her anything.
What I’d like to see is a list of who is going where and what scholarships they received that they are actually using. That’s what matters, not that they received a scholarship to a school they aren’t going to attend.
I enjoyed all of my kids’ award ceremonies. This last one I particularly savored though my son got two small school award mentions, no monetary value, and we had not shared college scholarship awards with the school yet, so none of that was announced. It was just wonderful to soak in all the joy and pride that was in that room. I knew a lot of the kids and parents for many years.
Our high school does list all the scholarship money won, (self reported) from every single university, including many that are turned down , as they see this as a way to help the 11th graders to become aware and apply , and school counselors to advise students to apply to the best merit awards around the country and overseas too. They do sometimes mix in financial aid by mistake, but its not really that harmful, as no one here, spends time trying to calculate incomes, so much, its much more about younger kids being inspired to try for a top school.
We also have a US map with pins that show where all our graduates go to college, over the years, right outside the counseling and college office.
Its just information gathering, thats helpful. Its not about the constant bragging and medals, etc for the 12th graders,
, its about data for the next set of kids coming through. Its important to track that, as younger students in Colorado need all the help they can get, and knowledge of where merit is awarded, is important.
@ChaosParent23 - I agree with @twoinanddone, it is a scholarship. When my appointment was announced at our scholarship ceremony some 35 years ago, the COL said “this award with a value of over $250,000 goes to…” It felt awesome. And its not free. I pledged my life to defend my country on active duty in the military for 5 years and at least 2 more reserve. For several of my classmates, they gave their lives defending our freedom. My starting pay as a 2LT was about $14k. If I had the choice again, I’d take it. GO ARMY! BEAT NAVY!
This system puts upper middle class families of high achievers at severe disadvantage. These kids can’t afford top colleges as EFC is ridiculously high. Only way to get merit is to settle for payment from colleges which kids don’t want to attend.
Most “merit” scholarships have some preference for need, gender, race, sexual orientation, geography, parent’s employer, major etc.
If you work hard and kids work hard, system expects your family to work harder and sacrifice more.
At my kids’ high school, all merit aid was listed in the program by student but no financial need aid…and some of the numbers were remarkable…$200,000 (over four years) was not unusual and one kid (who won several of the big things…like the Robertson at Duke and similar at other schools) was at over a million.
Also, @CupCakeMuffins my experience with true merit aid is that there’s little to no correlation with the financial need (other than kids who might need financial aid see it reduced if they also get a merit award).
Some have it, others don’t. Second tier colleges and non flagship state schools are more likely to have pure academic awards.
I just find it ridiculous to add all possible need based aid, demographic based scholarship and merit from all B, C, D grade colleges and flaunting it as getting millions. One person can only attend one school and not all freebies are merit.
I say it as a parent whose kid was eligible for multi millions in pure merit if applied to higher number of right schools but felt no need to turn college admissions into a sport.
This is a strange conversation. I can’t understand why someone with the OPs income would expect financial aid, or merit aid at a public university in CA.
Also weird to hear that apparently a lot of schools announce all the scholarships anyone got. I guess I could understand if it was some well-publicized community scholarship, as it’s good for the community and the school. But to announce scholarships for colleges kids are not attending just seems weird. Needless to say, our school does not do this. Awards night, sure. Not money though.
D’s HS was also one that listed all merit awards both in the honors night program as well as the one for graduation. There was no announcement though, and no $, just the name of the award and from which college. The school absolute touts how much merit aid is awarded to their graduating class (merit awards only, not FA).
I thought it was a bit weird at first too but it does help the guidance counselors track which schools are still giving big awards to help the next class when crafting their list. The GC actually requested copies of all award letters.
“I just find it ridiculous to add all possible need based aid, demographic based scholarship and merit from all B, C, D grade colleges and flaunting it as getting millions.”
Just to make it clear, that wasn’t what happened at my kids’ school ceremony and I’m not thinking that it happened at others either…this is 100% merit aid awards…no need-based. In the case of the kid over a million, he received the Robertson, the Morehead-Cain, and the Stamps at USC…and those were just the biggies…these were awarded based purely on his extraordinary smarts and extras.
Wow I’m thankful my kids’ school (public) doesn’t do this. A few community based small scholarships are awarded at Awards Day as well as a lot of recognition for achievement in high school that comes with a certificate and no money. The underclasses attend and in my ignorant opinion I thought that should be motivating to them even in the absence of money. I could see collecting this information and keeping it in the guidance office to help kids in future years see what schools offer what kind of money, but not to announce at a ceremony. They did announce a total amount of scholarship money offered to the senior class and everyone ooohed and aaahed, except my family who gets the whole you can only accept one offer thing. And we don’t even report scholarship amounts to the school because the guidance office has been of practically no help in the college application process. When asking for help making a decision about what schools to consider applying to early in the process my son was told “go look at the college websites.”
@CupCakeMuffins Just because you keep saying students don’t want to attend college on merit doesn’t make it true. And most pure merit is extremely difficult to get and has none of the preferences you claim. If you ever really want to open your mind to the great merit possibilities out there, PM me and I’ll gladly educate you. My D won 7 amazing full ride merit scholarships and almost $3 million in merit awards. She absolutely wanted to attend her school as did all the others who accepted her cohort scholarship, almost all of whom were accepted to elite schools and could afford to attend. Just in her year, the students parents include a Fortune 500 CEO, a number of doctors, lawyers. Your angst about merit scholarships is quite unreasonable, imo, and not the norm.
Is this announcing of scholarships (and even FA apparently) a regional thing? I’ve heard it mentioned on CC before but haven’t seen it in my area. Thankfully. I find it tacky but I find financial details personal. Plus, barring a few big merit scholarships at some strong state schools, it does put high achievers at a disadvantage since many top schools only give need based $.
Our high school lists merit scholarships of over $10k in the graduation program. It is true that a student with need is more likely to get some of the merit scholarships offered depending on university policy. Elite schools and in state flagships often only give need based aid. If I saw in the program that your child gained admission to one of the CA flagship universities, I would be appropriately impressed.
Those saying merit awards were announced at senior awards and listed on the grad program, are you talking about schools the kid chose not to attend?
My kid got merit awards, did not accept them, and was not even invited to senior awards.
No money was announced or published at graduation other than a little speech by the principal hitting the highlights with no names.
A local parochial high school I am familiar with in Chicagoland tallies all of the scholarship money awarded to the students (whether merit, need based, or merely discounting), from all the schools they were accepted at.
The marketing office uses this total number in many of their materials, in addition to other metrics such as proportion of applications accepted, % of students going to first choice school, etc.
I think those type of “award” ceremonies are ridiculous. Many merit awards are need informed. My kid was awarded merit he wouldn’t have gotten had he not filed the FAFSA. So had he not, he’s still the same student. And it depends where you are applying to. The numbers are pretty meaningless IMO. Even announcing where kids got in is obnoxious in my opinion. Plenty of kids even high stat ones need to pick conservatively for financial reasons. A lot of big awards are given to fill some institutional needs at a school. Plenty of schools inflate their prices to award scholarships and very few are full pay. This is all personal info. Getting the admissions and award should be reward enough without publicly announcing. Does anyone care or find that interesting other than the school.
We were just at an event for a regional high school group last week where the colleges the seniors were matriculating to were printed in the program. Given the nature of the group, the background of the families, and having known the group of kids for 4 years, it’s pretty obvious to me it was basically a list of income levels. It had Ivy League down to community college.
And yes, that is normal for your income level. Our EFC is higher and our income is lower (and not consistent year to year). We do have decent savings/diversified portfolio.
Our high school asked for scholarships awarded. We graciously declined to give the information. None of their business…and we told them so (politely). I have no idea what they did with the info, but they didn’t announce it or print it anywhere.
The school has also discontinued the annual awards night. It was a long affair, and only families with kids getting awards were invited. Students did not know what award(s) they were getting until they were announced. It was like an academic popularity contest. Same two or three kids got 6 or more awards each. Believe me when I say…there were other well deserving recipients…but all they got was a certificate anyway. No money, and the only books given were to the senior Presidential Scholarship students. These are now given out by the teachers during the school day…near the end of the school year.