<p>Many people here have mentioned that it is not worth the efforts seeking outside scholarship as amount is not much plus it may not be awarded for all four years. Most of the scholarship you get will be through the school you are applying to if you get it. </p>
<p>There are some scholarship major sub forums such as gates, coca cola, Toyota community Scholarship, do they also pay minuscule amount? what is your take on these scholarships?</p>
<p>The Gates, etc scholarships are highly competitive scholarships that do pay substantially for all four years.</p>
<p>The scholarships that typically pay for only one year are local scholarships from your area.</p>
<p>Those scholarships are worthwhile and there are subforums for each of them.</p>
<p>How will this change going forward? why won’t this happen over and over?</p>
<p>Apply for the scholarships you have the best chance of winning. Local, employer based or special category awards are examples of low hanging fruit and yes, you should apply. </p>
<p>How worthwhile they are depends on how much work it is, how much $$ and how likely you are to win.</p>
<p>Is need based scholarship independent of how you rank within the admitted pool? </p>
<p>Generally speaking, what ranking group( like 25, 50, 75 percentile group) you have to be within the admitted students in order to receive need based scholarship?</p>
<p>How about merit scholarship from school? do you have to be in top X percent to receive merit scholarship?</p>
<p>First there are 2 basic methods of awarding scholarship money…guaranteed and competitive. You get guaranteed scholarship if you meet some criteria (typically GPA/score based). </p>
<p>For competitive they rank applications from best (most desireable) to worst and start giving out awards from the top of the stack. </p>
<p>Need based scholarships are a subset of that stack, so if you have need you have a better chance of getting that scholarship. </p>
<p>Schools also administer specialty scholarships for specific groups. These are separate and sometimes require another application.</p>
<p>I’m going to be blunt. What you wrote is not at a college level. I would have denied the appeal on that basis alone. </p>
<p>Second, it reads like a list of excuses. You need to re-write this. Lay out what happened and then briefly say you lost focus. Then give the concrete steps you will take to succeed. The steps you listed are not enough. Any college student should do those. </p>
<p>How will you manage stress better (it’s only going to get worse)? How will you manage your job vs college better?</p>
<p>Just a point of clarification. Free money, i.e. not loans, given to you based solely on need is generally referred to as grants. The term scholarships is generally used for free money based on merit. However, some merit scholarships do have a need component as mitch indicated. It wasn’t clear if you were referring to both need-base and merit-based money as scholarships.</p>
<p>Need based, merit based scholarships which you won’t have to pay back.</p>
<p>I’m going to give ACT in two days. FAFSA you can’t fill out till Jan 1st. One can apply to school scholarship when you apply to school. When do you start applying for outside scholarships such as Gates, Coco cola, local scholarships etc etc</p>
<p>Need based - based on your financial situation and has nothing to do with your ‘rank in the admitted class’. Some schools commit to meeting 100% of need, but most don’t.</p>
<p>Merit based - based on your desirability in the admitted class. Rule of thumb is to be in the top 25% to expect any, but at many schools will only be available to a few superstars.</p>
<p>Read the websites for each scholarship you are applying to for those sort of details.</p>
<p>You also need to address how you’ve solved the problem of your internet being down so much (which frankly sounds like a very lame excuse). That’s a pretty critical element for taking online classes!</p>
<p>Just realize that at many schools, your financial aid amount will be reduced by the amount of outside scholarships that you get. It happened to my son. He won a large outside scholarship during the summer before his freshman year and the school rescinded both his work-study and his Stafford loan eligibility. In the long run, its better to have scholarship $ instead of the loans, but not getting the work-study job really hurt.</p>
<p>Were you attending full time or part time?</p>
<p>Also, check the eligibility requirements first.</p>
<p>In your rule of thumb, do all top 25% get the same merit scholarship i.e. if the school gives one or within that top 25% the scholarship may vary based on who is in top 5%, 10% etc. </p>
<p>Not sure if all top 25% get the same amount of scholarship. The reason I’m asking this is if you know this well in advance you can accordingly apply to the schools where you are going to be in top 15-20%.</p>
<p>I think what is lacking here is your getting buy in from your boss that you are doing a college program and have to have limits on the extra time that you can be available for. Is any support for that possible? Otherwise what is the point to wasting your aid money. And the internet not working? You can’t take online classes in that condition, just as a practical matter.</p>
<p>I’m looking at going to 4 yr private college, for which the COA may run into $50K. X % of your liquid assets goes towards EFC calculation beyond first $45K. So I believe If my parents paid off home mortgage, it will reduce our assets which in turn would reduce our EFC. What do you guys think? Any downside of doing this?</p>