Thank you @Gatormama. My son has decided on U of Tennessee. Still far, but only one day drive far.
I appreciate if someone can help explain how the merit scholarship offers are granted at the UCs for middle income families the filed FAFSA. I see families with similar middle income brackets and kids stats very similar and only one family will get scholarship (10k for 4 years from UCSC only) but none of the other families received any. Kids stats were around 4.3 W GPA, 1400s SAT, some ECs and internships. Is it much harder to get merit scholarships from the UCs? Does anyone know, or see any trend for middle income families, if the student need to be stellar with stats such above 4.5 GPA 1500 plus in SAT in order to qualify for any merit scholarships at the top 5 UCs? Also with the above stats does the major impact how much or to just qualify for any merit scholarship at a particular UC? An impacted major at an impacted UC the less changes for any merit scholarships? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
@mei0603:
“Is it much harder to get merit scholarships from the UCs?”
Compared to some other publics, yes.
“Does anyone know, or see any trend for middle income families, if the student need to be stellar with stats such above 4.5 GPA 1500 plus in SAT in order to qualify for any merit scholarships at the top 5 UCs? Also with the above stats does the major impact how much or to just qualify for any merit scholarship at a particular UC? An impacted major at an impacted UC the less changes for any merit scholarships?”
Tough to say. I think they are holistic. But I wouldn’t count on any merit scholarship from UCs. No scholarships if you are OOS.
@mei0603, please remember that the UC‘s and the California State Universities are public universities, funded by the State of California; they don’t have a lot of merit dollars. Funding, for our public universities, comes partially from the taxes that we pay in California. Typically, the UC‘s can’t afford to give out more than a couple of thousand a year in their merit scholarships. It varies by the school and each UC/CSU has a different amount.
Our middle-income families access the California Student Aid Commission to help pay for the State’s schools.
https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/tuition-financial-aid/types-of-aid/middle-class-scholarship-program.html
Usually, your California high school sends your student’s grades and qualification to the California Student Aid Commission.
Yes, the student needs to be exceptional and stellar in grades, test scores and extracurricular activities. I think you also need to understand the numbers of qualified kids, admitted in the UC system, who have scores over 1500 on their SATs.
If your family didn’t fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid before March 2, you may be out of luck. The universities get their information from the FAFSA application for both need-based and merit based scholarships.
Try contacting the California Student Aid Commission NOW, and see if there’s anything you can do about applying for some of the Middle Class and Blue and Gold opportunity scholarships. Please be patient because they have limited hours and are being bombarded by Californians whose families have lost their jobs.
How much do you think what your EFC is factors into your kid’s acceptance at private schools? For example, if a family’s EFC is $20,000 and the school’s sticker price is at $70,000, do you think the EFC is an issue that wholestically is a negative for the student? I have become pretty cynical and am convinced that it does play a bigger factor than the schools want students/parents to believe. Especially if it’s a school that guarantees to meet demonstrated need. Thoughts?
Also, do any particular state universities come to mind as schools for giving solid OOS merit besides Ohio State?
@Winky1, some colleges are need-blind. The ones that are need-blind and guarantee to meet full need are generally very tough to get in to.
There are a decent number of publics that give merit money to OOS. The Fin Aid/Scholarship forum on here has a bunch of info. Also this thread.
Thank you @PurpleTitan . For all of the time I have been on CC, I am not as familiar with the Fin Aid Forum. I already bookmarked a few threads. Our EFC will be quite a bit higher than it was in 2015 and 2017 when my other kids when to college. And I do think that’ll help my D22 when applying. I am trying to steer her clear of OOS state schools we may all love if she won’t be able to get an OOS merit scholarship to make things more affordable.
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The problem with this thread is that it’s a moving target. As colleges have been changing their policies in a number of cases. For example, Tulane and Providence, both of which used to be good places for merit aid, have redirected these funds in the past few years toward students most in need of financial assistance.
There are at least 3 reasons for this that I can think of:
- Schools who compete with the Ivies and aspire to be like them as well as those who compete in their backyard are adopting policies more similar to the Ivies.
- Meeting students’ financial needs makes a school more attractive and brings more applications, which improves the school’s profile. With more applications, it becomes more selective, which then brings even more applications so that it becomes even more selective.
- All colleges are becoming increasingly sensitive to improving its diversity profile. Realities being what they are, one of the requirements to bringing in more minority students is to make more need based financial aid available.
As a footnote, the general rule of thumb has been that more merit scholarships are available at southern colleges than in the north. In general. One northern school that has excellent merit scholarships available is RPI. Any parent who doesn’t know about the Rensselaer Medal and it’s accompanying scholarship should look into it. If your high school doesn’t participate, you should lobby them to do so. It’s easy for a high school to qualify.
^ Though RPI would still be expensive with the scholarships they typically give. WPI gives them too.
There are indeed moving targets, which is why aiming for automatic NMS scholarship or automatic ones for test scores may be more realistic.
Who knows if there will be merit aid in the future? I imagine that many, many previously unqualified for financial aid will find they now need it. Time will tell how the colleges respond to that.
@Happy4u, actually, more schools probably will use merit money to entice students to enroll. If anything, I’d expect cuts to fin aid.
Honestly, you should review the websites for each UC school, as their merit scholarships (ie, Regents) vary per campus. Many are very, very small – say, around $2000 or so and maybe an invitation to honors. UCs are, imo, very stingy with merit. If your kid needs merit – look elsewhere.
Thank you for feedback. As a newbie learning about scholarships is so much help…
Thank you so much for the information and the links. We did missed the deadline as I was not informed well back then and didn’t look into the whole thing about scholarships and aid. And with people telling us is not worth filling out the FAFSA for middle income families with two spouses working 
I totally didn’t bother with it. Until now that I hear families that received cal grants and scholarships and their family income are similar to mine then I said I regretted not filling it out. Finally had the FAFSA filled out last week when we SIR to UCSB from the waitlist and later saw the aid award letter on my sons portal but of course nothing was offered other than just a direct loan.
Thank you for the feedback. Is really tough I hear many kids are not enthusiastic to go look for merit scholarships because it has become so competitive and hard to find. Sigh!
Yes, identifying the automatic scholarships is the way to go. Ther are many scholarships that will not go away because they are endowed with funding that has stipulations about how the money can be spent.
I mentioned the Rensselaer Medal because it is one of those that will not go away. It is too entwined with the identity of who and what RPI is. With a history that goes back more than a century it now has more than 4000 high schools participating in the program. This year more than 200 members of the freshman class are medal winners. It’s a great recruiting tool.
Yes, RPI is expensive even with the scholarship, but it’s still much cheaper than the alternative. And the scholarship can be used for a 5th year under certain conditions, meaning that it’s possible to get RPI to pay half the tuition for a medal winner’s master’s as wellness as their bachelor’s degree.
“Also, do any particular state universities come to mind as schools for giving solid OOS merit besides Ohio State?” Miami University, Ohio University, University of Toledo, Bowling Green State, Kent State, etc.
Ohio privates also can be very generous with merit: Case Western, Wooster, Ohio Wesleyan, University of Dayton, Otterbein, etc.
You can add U. of Akron to Buckeye’s list for any engineering hopefuls.
We’ve been hearing merit is getting more competitive at Case.
“Also, do any particular state universities come to mind as schools for giving solid OOS merit besides Ohio State?”
Miami University has an incredible OOS merit offering for qualified students. See their Presidential Scholar offerings, and oos tuition at in-state rate tier schedules .
I worry about some of the second tier type LACs. Sure, they give merit but will they even be in business in four years? What kind of cuts are they making to make the financials work during this pandemic? We had some merit-giving LACs on D21’s list but are thinking about dropping them. Just as an example, Furman just dropped lacrosse and one other sport in these first cuts to the student experience this fall on top of other layoffs and paycuts. I know a lot of schools are having to do that but schools with bigger endowments farther up the USNWR list will likely weather this storm better than lower ranked schools. Furman’s endowment isn’t that low -$700 million. Schools like Ohio Wesleyan (239 million) or Wittenberg (116 million) scare me even more.
This virus has thrown a wrench in all of the 2021’s college searches and I think it’s important to dig into each school’s finances. You don’t want to send your student to a school that won’t exist in the future if you can help it.
As for UiUC being expensive, the trick is to have invested early! We prepaid Illinois tuition when the kids were little. I think full four years cost around $30k then. So, if our kids were so inclined, they could now go to UIUC for that investment plus four years of room and board so maybe a total or 30K + 48k for four years! But, shoot me now, neither of our kids is interested. If they wanted to study engineering or computer science, we would have insisted they apply.