<p>The Levine Scholarship at UNC Charlotte is a great one too. It’s worth $90,000 for instate students, including tutition, room and board, grant money for each recipient to design and implement a service project in the community plus four years of summer experiences to foster leadership skills.</p>
<p>wow everyone…thanks for all the good information for me to follow up on! Greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>holliesue</p>
<p>I am in a similiar situation helping an extended family member with limited resources. IMO:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you & her grandparents can purchase an inexpensive laptop (<$500)& router for your niece it will be well worth it over the next few years. This will enable her to research schools, check out test prep sites & help when it comes to apps. If web access is a problem perhaps she can look into local library, Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks with free wi-fi.</p></li>
<li><p>Get ALL parents & step-parents educated in the FA process. We are having a very tough time with the Non-Custodial CSS & 99% of the generous schools require this.</p></li>
<li><p>Offer to do a phone conference with her & her GC this year to set the path. The GC may appreciate the help for a top student who he/she probably doesn’t have time to deal with early in the game. For your neice it will help avoid getting conflicting info. In my situation, my relative’s GC told her she shouldn’t worry about SATII - The GC assumed given financial restraints my relative would go to a state school & SATII not needed - GC was unaware of the No Loan LAC schools and the requirements. My relative spent a month agonizing over who (me or GC) was giving her the best advice. When we finally all got to talk it out things were less stressful for the student.</p></li>
<li><p>I disagree with staying on the East Coast only. I have also heard of some of the high end schools including air travel expenses in the FA calc. I think it is important at this stage to let her explore all schools.</p></li>
<li><p>No one likes testing and studying for it. You may want to dangle a carrot, like Alabama’s generous scholar for those scoring over 1400 on SAT and the amounts given to NMF. A little incentive may go a long way.</p></li>
<li><p>My relative is very set on a small school. I am working hard to educate her on the merits of the Honors Colleges within the large Universities. I was not aware of these myself until CC.</p></li>
<li><p>Never too early to start school visits. If you can swing it, maybe have her visit you during the summer and visit a few schools. I don’t think it is a big deal that they are not in session at this stage. It will provide an idea of campus settings, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>If the high school is weak in this area, maybe offer to hire a paid counselor to help review essays and complete the resume. We are currently looking into this and have gotten prices in the $250 range.</p></li>
<li><p>Our biggest hurdle currently is low test scores – well CC low – as this may throw my relative out of the running of top LACs (which have the best FA), so spend plenty of time researching safety schools if your neice wants a small school. I personally have found CTCL book very helpful for this.</p></li>
<li><p>The heresay research I’ve done has indicated even if the school does not offer full tuition/full ride scholarship the LACs out of her region may make up for it in FA with little loans - we’ll see if this is true. My relative is in 11th grade, so I’d be happy to share our results with you next year (assuming we get over our CSS hurdle :)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>She’s fortunate in that she lives in one of the country’s best states when it comes to public and private higher education opportunities.</p>
<p>If you can afford it, it would boost her options if she’s able to take an SAT review course. If she’s very self motivated, she also can do just as well by studying on her own using review books and free on-line sites.</p>
<p>I’m not one to push low income students to consider colleges all over the country with the exception of what may happen through programs such as Questbridge. Most students of any income in this country go to college within 250 miles of home. College is a big step for almost everyone, and it’s hard enough to go away to college without having to also cope with adapting to a completely new region and climate, and being extremely far from what’s familiar to one. Low income students have the additional concerns of trying to thrive in places where most people have far more means than they do.</p>
<p>So… my advice would be to look closely at in-state. UNC is one of the best colleges in the country and if she maintains high grades and gets high scores, could be a great option for her. It also is one of only about 3 public universities in the country that guarantees to meet the full demonstrated need of all students.</p>
<p>I’ve heard really good things about UNC Asheville in terms of being a good public school that provides a nurturing environment.</p>
<p>I have never heard of any school factoring air fare into financial aid.</p>
<p>" disagree with staying on the East Coast only. I have also heard of some of the high end schools including air travel expenses in the FA calc. I think it is important at this stage to let her explore all schools."</p>
<p>At most, they factor airfare to school at the beginning of the year, to home at the end of the year, and to and from home in Dec.</p>
<p>Still, many if not most students go home more than that. Spring break, Thanksgiving break may be times that the campus is closed. If someone is living far from home, they may not have a place to go. They may not have the means to visit families of college friends who live nearby.</p>
<p>If there are family emergencies, 3-day weekends when other students go home, and other situations in which a student might want to go home, it may not be possible. </p>
<p>Add to this the fact that going to college is a big step even if one does this in state. There are lots of adjustments that one must make. It’s even more difficult if one is going to school thousands of miles from home. That distance also can make it difficult to get belongings to and from school and difficult for parents to visit even for graduation.</p>
<p>The student is fortunate to live in N.C., which has all sorts of terrific college options. No need to pay for an expensive college counselor. No need to fly her all over the country. Help her take a good look at the marvelous in-state options, and make sure she applies to schools that include some safeties that she knows she can afford and would provide her a fulfilling experience.</p>
<p>As has been mentioned, if she’s interested in UNC, definitely look into the Carolina Covenant. It’s a work-study program where, if the student works 10-12 hrs/week, UNC will meet up to the full cost of attendance (depending on need).</p>
<p>[The</a> Carolina Covenant ~ The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill](<a href=“http://www.unc.edu/carolinacovenant/index.php]The”>http://www.unc.edu/carolinacovenant/index.php)</p>
<p>As has also been mentioned, NC is one of the best states to live in for students in her situation. There are very good public schools that devote a lot of money to enabling low-income students to go to college without putting themselves in debt forever.</p>
<p>^^If you are an NC resident, it is hard to beat instate tuition unless there’s a full ride waiting out there somewhere else.
S2’s Spring semester tuition at one of our big state u’s. was a little less than $2200.</p>
<p>Yes, NC is a great state for your niece to be in. The state schools and the major private schools have lots of need-based aid. The Covenant scholarship at Carolina has received national attention. Be forewarned though that most schools do consider both sides of the family. It is sad but true that a non-contributing parent can keep a child from getting full (or in some cases any) need-based aid. I know: It is unfair that a parent who could help but won’t can further harm the child. Your neice sounds as though she should consider merit aid as well as need based. There are rather a lot of merit-based full rides in NC! The Park at State has already been mentioned, and there is also the Morehead at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Belk at Davidson. These three schools depend mainly on nominations from the high schools, and high schools sometimes don’t nominate the best students when, for instance, the child of one of the high school teachers or the child of what is considered to be a socially-elite family is in the running. However, these colleges might consider a student who is self nominated. And it can’t hurt to let the high school know that one wants to be considered. Also, UNC-Asheville has the Laurel scholarship which might be a full ride, but I’m not sure. And the Carolina’s Scholars at UNC-Chapel Hill did not offer totally full-rides in the past to in-state students, but that may have changed, and in any case, thoses scholarships do pay much of the expenses. Duke, I believe, only offers tuition for its merit scholars. But Duke does have a number of these just for students from the Carolinas. Finally, Wake Forest has a number of full-ride merit scholarships. And like Duke, Wake Forest picks its own candidates with no help (?) from the high schools. All of these full rides typically include tuition, room, board, books, a computer, and a semester abroad! And your niece sounds like a very good candidate! And NC would be a good place for her to go to medical school as the two in-state medical schools have some of the lowest tuitions around. Finally, encourage your neice to take all the AP courses that her high school offers and to self-cram for the SAT. There are a couple books with past SAT tests and taking real tests under exam conditions is good practice. Remember, that for the full-ride merit scholarships, colleges often like a good public school kid. Go for it.</p>
<p>Frankly, if the kid is qualified for anyone of these full rides, she wouldn’t need advice from this thread. There is a CC student who turned down Harvard (or Yale?) to take up the Morehead at UNC. Just so you know who they’re looking at. Has anyone suggested Meredith College in Raleigh, though?</p>
<p>Volunteer work, straight A’s, varsity tennis. She really should look at the full rides. The Morehead lists “physical vigor” as a necessity–which usually means a varsity sport. This girl would seem to fill all the blocks so far. I personally know students who have gotten some of these full-ride merit scholarships. This student wouldn’t want to look back and say, “I coulda been a contender.” In any case, she doesn’t have to apply for some of these scholarships; she just has to apply to the schools and let them discover her.</p>
<p>Quirky and good FA? Smith and MoHo.</p>