Specific Scholarships/Grants from places other than institutions

If you need money to attend your list of schools, and you reside in Nevada, you should take off all of the schools that are public. These schools are funded by their taxpayers and usually don’t fund OOS students.

Take all of the UC’s of your list. They don’t have money for OOS students. (SDSU is also a public but is a little less at $40K per year and is very hard to get into if you are not a resident.)

The California privates will be ultra competitive and your unweighted GPA and ACT is currently not good enough for the high scholarships at Loyola M, USD and USC. Remember that the more popular the location, the harder it will be to get funding.

UW funds their students first. It is a public state school and will be very expensive. U of Oregon is in the same category.

Try to retake your ACT if you need more funding options. For scholarships, you need to consider the schools that want students, like those in the Midwest and South.

@astenson

Please provide your stats and what scholarships you won.

My daughter won $8,000 in outside scholarships, including Carson, Comcast, Simon Youth and several local only ones. She was very organized and applied to over 100. Her qualifications included raising 3 guide dog puppies, editor of high school newspaper, 3.7 unweighted/4.0 weighted and 1260/1600 SAT. She got much more money (11,500 a year from Rowan University in NJ) in merit aid from the school she attended. Because of AP transfer of 29 credits and lots of effort, she will graduate in 3 years. Currently has a 3.9 GPA and enters her junior year in the fall. She did not qualify for any ethnic or low income based scholarships. She did win a $1,000 scholarship from the college in addition to the merit aid this spring.

I would strongly disagree with the idea to set expectations on winning scholarships easily to pay for these schools. I would advise the OP to concentrate on finding affordable schools and not to waste money applying to expensive schools you realistically won’t be able to attend. One or two dream applications, fine, but don’t drop $1,000 applying to 10 places instead of focusing on the schools you can afford (and will enjoy especially coming out with low debt!).

I also have a foster son who won Gates Millennium. There were 57000 applicants, 1,000 winners. That is a huge amount of competition. Nothing is easy money.

I can’t speak to all of the schools on your list. However, I think that OOS, your chances of admission at UCLA, UNC-CH, and U Mich are less certain and the cost is going to be quite high. SDSU OOS will be expensive.

Of the privates, Vanderbilt, USC, Cornell, and Brown are reaches. Fordham might also be a reach and certainly will be expensive.

You might get merit money from U of Denver. Other private schools in the west where you have a shot at merit would be U of Puget Sound, Willamette, and maybe Redlands. Typically merit awards are in the 15-25K range, leaving 40K+ to pay.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss WUE schools. For example, at UNM, you would be eligible for in-state tuition (Amigo scholarship) and a total annual cost of attendance of less than 20K

https://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html

Western Washington, Washington State and U of WY are also very reasonably priced with WUE.

ASU Barrett you have on your list and that’s another good option. If you are tired of hot weather, NAU is not bad.

I agree that public options in Nevada could be better. Happily your stats should be enough to get you into a reasonably priced public university somewhere in the West.

Have your parents provided a budget of what they are willing/able to pay?

@mamaedefamilia yes! They said 35k a year would be the most they would pay