Scholarship Help

I am an incoming college freshman. My GPA is 5.31 weighted, I have 3 AP credits with 5 more on the way, and I am a member of multiple honors societies. I have a 34 ACT and a 1490 SAT. I participate in a wide variety of extracurriculars including orchestra and Model UN. I got accepted to University of Wisconsin - Madison, but got very little financial aid offered ($5,500 in loans), leaving me with about $50,000 to pay per year.

I’ve applied to as many scholarships as I can, but most of them I’m not eligible for (I’m not a woman, not a minority, not in poverty, not disabled, not LGBT, etc.) I’m looking for purely merit based scholarships that look at things like my grade, standardized test scores, and generally academic success. I’ve also sent the university an email requesting more aid, stating that although my family makes a decent income, we have a large household of 6 and so our expenses are very high, making $50k unreasonable. UW - Madison is my dream school so I really want and need this to work out, but I have had absolutely no luck in finding relevant scholarships. Please help!

Finding $50k of renewable scholarships at this point (or any time) will be very, very unlikely. I would look at more affordable options. Do you have acceptances at other schools?

Are you a Wisconsin resident? Can you clarify what “decent income” means?

If you are paying $50000 for Wisconsin, you are out of state.

Where else did you apply? What is your instate option.

What can your parents pay??

Try for Army or Navy ROTC scholarship.
If you were from MN , there is tuition reciprocity.
http://heab.state.wi.us/faq/reciprocity.html

No one should view ROTC as solely a scholarship cash cow.

ROTC should be for folks who want to serve in the military

It’s almost certainly too late to be starting that now for matriculation this coming fall, and besides, the prime motivator for doing ROTC should be the desire to serve as an active duty military officer for at least several years after college graduation, and not as a good way to get some money to pay for college.

Do you have any affordable options?

What state are you from?

The best sources of financial aid are the colleges themselves. Most don’t have the resources to give a lot of free money to OOS students. If your parents make too much for need based aid but can’t pay much you have to look at schools that will give you merit for your stats. Unfortunately, the Univ. of Wisconsin isn’t one of them.

Do you have any financial safeties on your list?

There may be some schools still accepting applications with merit money available. I haven’t checked but maybe UNM, Alabama, UA-Huntsville, UT Dallas?

As others said, you’re unlikely to find $50k per year scholarships. You’ll need to pick an affordable college.

There is very limited assistance for certain shortage careers in different states. Teaching, nursing, EMT, firefighter, and defense related critical foreign languages, STEM, cybersecurity.

You might find something helpful here, which include civilian DOD and military opportunities, but deadlines may have passed.
https://www.jshs.org/2018/04/28/dod-programs-opportunities/

Also Americorp, but it only provides about $5k (similar to Pell Grant) after you serve.

https://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/americorps/what-americorps

As I have had to tell my DD20, Sometimes you have to get a new dream. We can not always have what we want. Even with merit, your school should be affordable in the event that you have a bad semester and fall short of the merit requirements (not that I expect her to). I am also of the mindset that we would not apply to various scholarships for the purpose of meeting tuition as we will have to hunt and get scholarships every year in order to remain enrolled, which is not a guarantee. Many schools that offer merit have a deadline for the application. One of DD20’s schools had a deadline of Dec. 15th. Hopefully, you applied and was accepted to other schools that are more affordable. Good Luck to you.

I don’t know if you understand how these out-of-state fees work.

The resident taxpayers of Wisconsin provide funds, through their state taxes, to pay for that university, so money is tight from that state. It’s a public school that needs dollars.

Funding preferences have to go to residents, because their parents have paid and continue to pay for those schools.

Your parents don’t pay into that system, through their taxes, so you have to pay the OOS fees. The best funding comes from the schools themselves. They admitted you, in part, because they needed your $50,000 per year, to help fund the school.

I know you don’t want to hear this, because you really want to attend and can’t afford the school, but you really need to find a school that will be affordable for your parents at this late stage.

I don’t know of anyone, who would give you $50,000 a year, to attend the school.