I’ve applied to a total of 313 scholarships this academic year (high school senior). I’ve won a grand total of 0.
Am I doing something wrong? I’m starting to get frustrated.
Some context:
I’ve been applying since Junior year. Still nothing since then.
I’m going to UCSD to study Materials Science and Nanoengineering next year.
I don’t qualify for need based aid, because my EFC is over $80000.
What are your other stats? SAT/ACT, class rank, GPA, activities and community service? Did you have a chance to see what your recommenders wrote? Did you have anyone look over your essays?
It sounds if you have an EFC (expected family contribution) of $80,000, then you have, at least on paper, no need. Did you mean to say your family income was $80,000 a year?
I am impressed that you have found that many scholarships to apply for.
My daughter has applied for about 100, and she has won 4, all smaller amounts. We believe, but there is no hard evidence we can prove this theory with, that she is not winning the larger ones (i.e. Elks, Jack Kent Cooke) because our financial need is not great enough compared to similarly qualified applicants.
How are you going to pay for UCSD?
Many private scholarships have a need-based component. Since your family is affluent, likely those scholarship committees preferred awarding to someone with lesser means.
How much is your family going to pay each year for college?
@aku123 It appears that you’re OOS for UCSD. How did you plan on paying for that? Are your parents willing to pay $55k per year for you to go?
My parents are telling me that they will help pay, saying that nothing is worth as much as a good education, but there’s no way I can let them take the burden alone, so I’ve been applying left and right. It’s morally wrong to give someone else burdens for my own endeavours.
I got a 32 on the ACT, am in the top 10% of my class, have an unweighted GPA of 3.8 (weighted is 4.1), and my annual family income is roughly $180,000 (yes, I meant my EFC is $80,000, not my annual family income). Activities include Mayor’s Advisory Council (secretary), Science Olympiad, JV Tennis (team captain), Graphene Research, Asian Caucus (vice president), and I started a business around teaching an art called poi.
While I’m a student, besides applying for more scholarships, I’ll attempt to make the tennis team, and continue my research on graphene and other nanomaterials.
Sounds like they don’t intend to take the burden alone. You should not even be considering a school that will cost $56K/year OOS.
I agree with you totally. And there is no way for YOU to pay the OOS bill for UCSD. If your parents want to pay it that’s their decision. I would not.
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attempt to make the tennis team
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?
Do you mean at UCSD? Are you thinking that you’ll get scholarship money that way? You will not .
. . . . . except for peace of mind. Your parents really have set themselves up for a huge debt. Did they save ANY money for an expensive education??? I bet not.
I’ll tell you something, no matter how hard you try, you won’t find any scholarships that will cover ¼ of a Million dollars. Oh and guess what? The fees are increasing by 8%. Your stats are average when compared to California students. Most of those students are in the top 9% of their classes AND GPA’s average- 4.0’s
We are URM- Mexican American. All 3 of our high achieving kids (National Merit Winners) applied for scholarships through the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the National Hispanic Recognition Program. Yes, they applied for merit. Did they get ANY money? Yes and No. No from anything URM-related. Yes from NMF-$2500 from National Merit. That doesn’t begin to cover the health fees. Although most of those “URM” Scholarships stated that need wasn’t a factor, guess what? It was.
UCSD is a California State public school. Which means that California taxpayers and the government fund the schools. California has excellent tennis players. Why would they go OOS, when our players are ranked well both in California and nationally by the USTA?
The UC’s don’t have the funds to recruit athletes unless you attend UCLA and are ranked #1 in Florida, NY or Massachusetts. My kids were ranked well for their tennis skills in our state (California). Our middle DD was a sought after, recruited athlete. The only way she or her siblings would get their athletic scholarships was to go to small OOS privates. UCSD held local High School Summer Tennis Camps to get funds for their program. There is no way they would fund an OOS student if they could barely afford their OWN program.
Why would you put your parents in this position? Didn’t you or they realize the costs involved? Neither you nor they are going to recoup that money. You won’t be successful in finding $250K or anything close to it; it’s just not gonna happen, sorry; you picked a public school with no money.
My advice, take a gap year and reapply to affordable schools.
It sounds like the problem was in your application strategy. The biggest scholarships come from the schools themselves. Did you apply to any affordable schools or any schools where you would qualify for scholarships?
There are lots of paths to your destination goal. If you want to be involved in research, that means grad school. Top grad programs are not limited to top schools’ UG students.
Have you looked at the list of schools that still have openings? There might be significantly cheaper options.
Agree wth Mom2aphysicsgeek. The best scholarships come from the colleges. The scholarships you find on Fastweb and the like are mostly small and for only one year, and many have a need component, whether it’s expressly stated or not. I looked through a number of those scholarships and ultimately decided my daughter’s time would be better spent working a job or improving her academics, because I didn’t think, with our financial situation (no need) and the number of people who apply, that it was worth the time to write the essays and complete the applications. On the other hand, she received a full tuition scholarship, plus an additional fellowship, from her college for her stats (your stats would qualify for the full tuition scholarship at her school). Most publics, like UCSD, do not give much to OOS students. There are a few that do, though. Many privates outside the very top tier give generous merit or “tuition discounting” as well. Your stats would definitely get you merit aid from many schools.
What is the appeal of UCSD? Where else did you apply? What is your home state? If your parents can’t afford or aren’t willing to pay for UCSD (you haven’t said whether your parents have college savings, whether there are other children to put through college or how much they’re willing to pay), have you considered taking a gap year and reapplying to a better list of schools that will give you merit aid?
The appeal is the greater opportunities on campus and in the area. I’ve been talking to some professors there to get a research project going. We have a little over $80,000 saved up from a savings plan, and my only sibling is not in college yet. As far as Freshman year goes, I talked to my counsellor, and she told me that getting aid at an out of state public school in the first year is very difficult, but it’s very easy in the next three years, even more so if I do residency.
The other schools I applied and got into to were UNL (local university in Nebraska), and NYU. All three have decent programmes in science and engineering, but NYU wouldn’t offer me any chances to do research, and I’d been doing research at UNL, but my research advisor was telling me to go to UCSD to pursue a greater immersion in more complicated projects. He has connections there, so he wrote me a letter of recommendation.
I’m not terrified of going into debt, but I am conscious of it. We can afford the costs, but I’m just trying to minimise them.
Your counselor is wrong about yrs 2-4. Very few states allow residency requirements to be met by students. Residency is based on parents.
Your research advisor is also not paying your tuition. You are looking at $55,000/yr. You don’t even have enough for 2 yrs.
Fwiw, undergrads can conduct research at a lot of universities and participate in REUs. My ds was involved in graphene research in high school, has done radon and neutrino research during his freshman and sophomore yrs at college, will be at a top physics research university doing research via and REU this summer…all for free bc he is on full scholarship. UG research at over $200,000 is unnecessary. Grad school is where you need your ultimate research focus to be.
If you think UCSD gapped you, just scan the boards here for an impression of NYU’s standard approach. Given that Nebraska has a materials science major and the four-year cost for instate looks to be about 80K, you could get your BS from there just about debt-free, right? Plus they have the Nebraska Research Initiative. Is that an option?
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talked to my counsellor, and she told me that getting aid at an out of state public school in the first year is very difficult, but it’s very easy in the next three years, even more so if I do residency.
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Your counselor is VERY WRONG, particularly about Calif publics. You need to tell her so that she doesn’t give that horribly WRONG advice to any other innocent student.
You did not go to a Calif high school therefore you will not get aid or instate rates. Your parents don’t live in Calif, therefore you will never get Calif residency as an undergrad.
Your parents will be expected to pay the full $55k per year for ALL FOUR YEARS.
(But the even bigger point is…your parents’ EFC is $80k per year. Even if you went to a Calif high school and your parents lived in Caliif, you STILL would not get ONE DIME of aid because your EFC is higher than the cost of a UC. Your GC either doesn’t know your EFC or she must be incredibly stupid.)
@“aunt bea” -I have to disagree with your statement that most URM scholarships factor in need eventhough they say need itsn’t a factor for private merit scholarships. We too are Mexican-American and my DD just received her private scholarships for her junior year. Our EFC exceeds her COA and she receives scholarships from multiple URM organizations including Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the Hispanic Heritage Foudation as well as others. She receives between $10K to $14K each year so far in private scholarships where need is stated to not be a consideration in making the scholarship award. One thing I do think factors in her success is that she has a STEM major and there is a big push with the URM organizations for that.
As far as the OP, I can see UCSD from my house and know students there. There is no reason to go into that much debt for UCSD, in fact my DD’s friends are trying to transfer out of UCSD because it is very impacted in the sciences and engineering. Go to your in-state school and then go to UCSD for graduate school. If you do not like your options then take a gap year and reapply. There are many other schools with great material science programs that would be more affordable for you. As others have stated, this past year the UC system did away with offering financial aid to out of state students so the cost will not go down for you and residency is not possible once you apply as an out of state student. There are over 3000 colleges in U.S. and I am sure you can find other affordable colleges.
(@itsv you may disagree, but my checkbook shows otherwise. My three kids were/ are all STEM majors; the eldest became an engineer-she had some money given to her, but it was a university grant, not URM-based.
The middle dd is graduating with a degree in neurobiology {she received $300 from her uni, her first year=big whoop} and the youngest is studying comp engineering at Caltech. Other than the NMF $2500 yearly stipends, everything that my three applied for, through anything URM-based like NHRP or HSF, fizzled. The kids jumped through hoops to send in documentation and their counselors were very surprised that not one received a URM award.
We were actually told by HSF that yes, my kids apps were great for the merit-based scholarships they offered, but that we made too much money and that they had to give their merit monies to need-based kids without resources. My children only applied to merit-based programs. They offered my middle dd a carrot of $100 if she would have the registrar at her school sign the HSF documentation. So, my DD gets the signature in less than a day, faxes it in, and they immediately replied, “Well we’ve made a mistake, we don’t have those extra funds after all.”
Disagree all you want; I’ve worked 60-hour work weeks to pay off their university bills, we’ve scrimped and saved money, squirreling it away in their 529 accounts which adversely impacted us. We were completely honest on all of our paperwork; and my husband works insane hours to be on top of the costs. In the end, neither our children nor will my husband and I owe any money by the time the youngest finishes, but it would have been nice to have had a little help.)
OP, save your money. Go where it is affordable. @mom2collegekids is absolutely correct. You have an OOS transcript which translates to full fees, all 4 years. Your counselor is wrong or you heard Her incorrectly. She needs to stop giving misinformation. Give her this link: http://www.ucop.edu/general-counsel/_files/ed-affairs/uc-residence-policy.pdf