<p>I'm a junior this year in High School and as I start looking towards college and rising tuitions, I notice I'm definitely going to need a big big scholarship, especially since I have high college aims.</p>
<p>I was wondering if any of you could suggest a few scholarships for me. I'm looking for merit based scholarships, especially those heavy on academic achievement (I'm almost sure I won't qualify for need-based). </p>
<p>A little bit about me:
-2400 SAT Score & 4.25 cumulative GPA and so far a 5.0 GPA in 1st semester of Junior year
-100+ community service hours
- Varsity Tennis Team
- Founded JSA (Junior State of America) on campus, and part of many clubs</p>
<p>Also, if any of you know a good summer program/internship I might be able to get into (especially the ones they pay for you to go there), please let me know.</p>
<p>There are a lot of scholarships you could qualify for. There are also a lot of scholarship databases that you could use to find good scholarships. Collegeboard has one. You can ask your guidance counselor as well. Your school website might even have a list. You should also be aware that its much easier to win a lot of small/local scholarships than to win even one big/national scholarship. Those local scholarships could end up raising all the money you need if you apply to enough. </p>
<p>If you are not having a lot of success online, you can buy a scholarship book at the book store. It will have an up-to-date list of various scholarships.</p>
<p>Most scholarship money is awarded by individual colleges, not by scholarship competitions. It sounds like you may be eligible for full tuition merit scholarships from many colleges.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www”>www</a>. fastweb. com has the best list of scholarships, which also keeps track of deadlines. That mainly includes national awards. As noted above, there typically is less competition for local and regional scholarships, but they are harder to find.</p>
<p>thank you guys for your responses. Do any of you happen to know any specific scholarships/programs that place an emphasis on academic achievement? And/or do you know any ways i can find out more about local scholarships. I think the guidance counselor thing was a good tip thanks</p>
<p>Definitely apply to Harvard, Yale, and/or Princeton. If you have financial need, they’ll provide you with significantly higher aid than EFC calculators would suggest.</p>
<p>Plan to apply for Coca-Cola Scholars and the Youth Foundation, Inc.'s Hadden Scholarship, and certainly register for Fastweb. But bear in mind that if you get need-based aid from a university, most of any outside scholarships that you receive will only serve to reduce the amount of need-based aid that you get, so it won’t be a net gain. Big scholarships from top schools would be the best bet for perfect grades and SAT scores. Check out the websites for Vanderbilt, Robertson Scholars at Duke and UNC, and perhaps U. of Chicago.</p>
<p>Colleges vary in how they treat outside scholarships. The total aid cannot exceed the cost of attendence. However, many colleges will allow a student to reduce their loans before they reduce the amount of need based aid provided by the college, if the student receives outside scholarships. Since many outside scholarships are only $1,000 to $3,000 a year, that often works out fine.</p>
<p>If you need merit scholarships for college, then private scholarships are not likely going to work for you.</p>
<p>Private scholarships are often for SMALL amounts and ONLY for freshman year. So, even if you were to get a few private scholarships for freshman year, how would you pay for your soph, junior and senior years?</p>
<p>You need to be realistic. </p>
<p>I just talked to a student this morning who can’t return for his second semester at his college because all of his private scholarships got applied to his first semester and he has no way to pay for his second semester. The VERY SAD aspect is that he was offered free tuition and free housing to another college as an incoming freshman, but he turned that down for the “prestige” of another school (which he now doesn’t have the money to continue attending). Like you, his family doesn’t qualify for much aid. </p>
<p>Be realistic… Apply to some schools that will give you big merit for stats. If you happen to get a big private scholarship for all 4 years, then you can opt for that, but that is VERY unlikely.</p>
<p>Thanks gadad, I’ll definitely look into those and thanks everyone for their replies again. I definitely get that I’m going to have to look at universities to give me a majority of my merit scholarships and have to be realistic with them, but before I can start applying to schools for those I was thinking I would try to rack up as much as I could using private scholarships to help pay for college. </p>
<p>PSAT Scores come in sometime this week, I’ll let you guys know how I did when I get them.</p>
<p>^^YES! You should make the National Merit Scholarship Cutoff with that score. Congrats. I would suggest you start looking at schools that give big $$$ to National Merit Finalists. You can find those threads in the National Merit Section of the Financial Aid board…</p>
<p>Really good private colleges tend to have terrific financial aid. I’m think HYPS are pretty much free for families with low incomes. So if you have high college aims, your college could potentially take care of all your financial aid issues.</p>
<p>Go to their websites and look at the scholarship programs for U. of Arizona, U. of Alabama, Texas A&M and U. of Oklahoma. Once you make National Merit Finalist (by writing an acceptable essay and keeping your grades up), you’ll have guaranteed scholarships there that are more than full-tuition and quite close to full-ride. You’ll find others listed in this thread:</p>
<p>haha sorry guys I feel like I framed my original question incorrectly, my fault. My family income is pretty high (which is why I’m confident we won’t qualify for need-based aid, only merit) but because I want to go to the best possible school I can get to (which tend to be very expensive and getting expensive-er) I was wondering if you all could recommend any scholarships to help out. I realize most of the big scholarships would come from the school itself, but I’m wondering if I can do anything before fall of senior year.</p>
<p>Also, I was wondering if any of you knew some exceptional summer programs/internships that might make for a meaningful summer. Some of the ones I had picked up on were MITES, TASP and LEAD business program but I’m definitely open to suggestion. </p>
<p>All of your responses have been great thank you so much for them.</p>