<p>I'm a senior in Iowa, and I was wondering about scholarships at the University of Illinois. I went to their website U</a> of I Admissions: Scholarships for select freshmen in any academic discipline, based on academic excellence and I get the impression that out of state students can only receive the University Achievement Scholarship. I'm a National Merit Semifinalist and hopefully Finalist; does that not give me any scholarships? Considering Iowa State would give me a full-ride and I am planning on getting my masters in engineering, making the university I go to next year not as important, it would affect if I choose to go to Illinois.</p>
<p>It is not a place that hands out a lot of full scholarships. There are few campus wide that are tuiton waiver scholarships. For example if you are out of state and qualify for the Campus Honors program (120 total and need to be in about top 1% of those admitted rank/test score) they usually give OOS a scholarship that relieves the OOS portion of tutiton and thus you pay as if you were in-state. </p>
<p>College of Engineering has its own scholarships, rank/test score are key, and there are a lot of them but most are in the $1,000 to $4,000 per year range, although you can get in higher range, $4,000 to $8,000, when OOS with outstanding qualifications.</p>
<p>Thank you for telling me that. I had heard a little about the scholarship that lets you pay as if you were in-state.</p>
<p>I went to the Illinois engineering website, and I could not find any general scholarships. When I visited last week, my tour guide suggested going into Mechanical Engineering since I don’t know which specific engineering I want to do. The scholarships listed under the Mechanical Engineering Department were through other organizations, but some of them were interesting to see. Because these scholarships aren’t directly through the university, does it matter if I apply Priority? I would like to improve my ACT and SAT scores, and I want to receive the scores before I send them out, so I would not make it by the deadline. I’ve heard that my score of 33 on the ACT would automatically put me in the Honors Program, but is there a benefit to sending a higher score if I receive one? Is there an option of sending the score I have now, and then resending a higher score if there are benefits?</p>
<p>That 33 would put you in the James Scholar program, but not the Campus Honors. There is a difference. I actually never knew anyone who was in the Honors program so I can’t really explain beyond that though.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a huge difference between Campus and James Scholars. Campus honors is basically for the top 120 of all amitted to the university. Each college then has its own James Scholars program and basis for being invited (engineering usually invites those with 33 or higher ACT) and there are no scholarships attached to it. Moreover, many get invited as it is designed to capture anywhere from the top 12% to 15% of the class.</p>
<p>Large numbers of the engineering scholarships are provided by outside entities and most of those specify for which major(s) it is (and thus why it is difficult to find scholarships on-line related to engineering in general rather than having instead to go to each department to see what is available). However, there is no separate application for any of those – if it is a freshman award it is based on your application materials and particularly rank and test scores.</p>
<p>Your ACT score is good; don’t know your SAT score but I assume it is also good if you are a National Merit semi-finalist. (Note, if you are talking about SAT IIs, forget it, UIUC does not use the IIs for admission.) If you’re concept is you want to improve them for scholarship consideration that does not prevent applying by priority date for early action. Scholarships are not determined until after February deadline date and thus even if admitted in December, you can still add a new score to your file which can be used for scholarship consideration. In any event, for engineering applying early gives only some slight advantage as the engineering college tends to hold off on large numbers of decisons until all applications are in (many get accepted in December, many get rejected, but large numbers get deferred to February and then majority of those ultimately do get accepted). Whether you apply early or late makes no difference for any merit award decisions.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize that there was no separate application for the schloraships. Thanks for saving me from filling out several random applications that would only be loosely tied to the university. </p>
<p>The problem with my ACT score is that I received a 32 for the most important subscore, math. My science was even worse, a 27/29 I can’t remember, so it might affect the admission decision. My SAT score of 2000 is from 2.5 years ago, so it is much lower than I hope it should be now, but since I have to take the SAT for National Merit, I want to see if my SAT score would be better than my ACT score. Usually on standardized testing I do better at the math portion, but both times I have taken the ACT have given me a lower math score than a reading and english score. </p>
<p>Thank you for your feedback. I think I’ll wait until after I take the tests to apply.</p>
<p>Well I’ve applied to this school ( waiting for them to recieve my transcripts etc…) and when I was looking for scholarships there was so many of them that I couldn’t even go through them all. So you really never know what you could recieve if accepted, plus its not like they ask for rec’s etc… just test scores and transcripts ( and two essays).</p>