Hello! I am currently a junior in high school and I wanted to know about scholarships.
When should I start applying for them and how? What if I get into a good college, but I can’t afford it. My top choice currently is University of Virginia which is around I believe 15k. I know it’s not that big compared to other colleges, but for my family and I it’s still high. Any tips on how to get scholarships and what I should do?
I know other posters will chime in, so I’ll just give a few words of advice.
A tip: Run the Net Price Calculators on each school’s website. Make a list of schools–safeties, matches, and reaches. While making your list, take finances into account and make sure you have one or two schools that you can almost definitely get into and that your family can afford. The situation where you get into a good college and can’t afford it never has a magical ending–at best, students attend a more affordable college; at worst, students are left scrambling to find an affordable college to attend in May. Please take finances into account when applying.
That said, the most reliable scholarships come from the school itself. Schools have merit-based scholarships, based on academic achievement, and need-based scholarships, based on need as determined by the FAFSA and other documents. Each school’s policies are different. For instance, some schools meet need while others don’t. Other reliable scholarships are the big and really competitive ones, like Questbridge and POSSE.
You can apply for outside scholarships because it never hurts. But it is unwise to depend on outside scholarships to fund your education, for a variety of reasons. Many outside scholarships are unrenewable, which means you will have the scholarship freshman year and will be ineligible to retain it the following year. Also, depending on each school’s policies, outside scholarships usually decrease your aid package. This means the amount your family pays out of pocket will not decrease until you have enough outside money to essentially replace the money your school has already offered you and then some. Again, I don’t want to discourage you from applying for outside scholarships because sometimes they can eliminate loans, but I would not recommend you exert the majority of your energy applying for them.
Also, you should consider how much your family can and will pay annually for college. Please have them involved in the financial part of the process. Otherwise, it can lead to a world of trouble.
Okay thanks! I’ll look more into their websites! I just don’t want my parents to pay a lot of money and be a “burden.”
Do you have the stats to get accepted to UVA? Is yours a low income family? UVA meets full need for all accepted students.
I’m not sure, I just made a post about my stats and I’m worried about if I would even get in. My family is a middle class family, but I would say my parents have a low income.
It’s very hard to give you any solid info about your stats without an SAT or ACT score. Your acceptance to UVA will be based on your GPA and your SAT or ACT score.
You need to talk about college finances with your parents. How much CAN and WILL they pay annually for you to attend college.
Also…FYI the total cost of attendance for an instate student at UVA is over $30,000 a year…tuition, fees, room, board…not $15,000.
Do you live within commuting distance of UVA? If not…you need to include ALL the costs to attend. Even their tuition costs only for 2018 are $17,000. Not sure where you got that $15,000 number.
Okay, I’ll talk to them soon about it. Yeah I looked at the UVA website, but I did not read it correctly. That was the cost not including tuition. Thanks!