So I will be going to Tech this fall and I received the highest automatic scholarship you can get. It’s a total of $10,000 but only $6,000 is renewable. So how is the situation for scholarships for people already enrolled? Are there a lot more opportunities for current students? And how competitive are they?
There’s a scholarship application that you can submit for the next year. You need to get recommendations from two professors or so. It’s also pretty lengthy, almost as long as the Apply Texas application because you’ve got to write several essays.
There are some scholarship opportunities for students, but the award amounts are so low that they’ll barely make any difference. Some scholarships are within the $250 range. It’ll buy you maybe one book each semester.
My major is a major where most people are rich enough that their parents can afford to put them through all four years. I’m not one of them, but I actually managed to scrounge up a lot of scholarship money for the fall semester this past spring.
And the competitiveness of the scholarships depends on which major you chose. Most of the scholarship money you’ll get from the scholarship application comes from the department you’re in. So if you’re in a very unpopular major, you’re likely to get some money. If you’re in a major with tons of students like engineering, then a scholarship is going to be tough to come by.
@cameraphone I’m actually going into engineering so I guess I’ll have to compete hard for those. But you also mentioned a lengthy application for which I need two recs, is that like an application for multiple scholarships or for one big one? And will a high GPA be enough to win some of those scholarships or is it more about getting involved?
@Aurelio97 Texas Tech provides just a single scholarship application that’ll be used to consider you for multiple scholarships. All of them will be within the university system. You’ll be considered for some of the main scholarships that the university itself provides, and then your application will be forwarded to the engineering department you’re in. There, you’ll be considered for engineering scholarships as well.
Scholarships will come from a high GPA, good essays and good recommendations. I’m not majoring in engineering, so I wouldn’t know how many scholarships you’d get for just a high GPA, but probably not many.