It’s the time of year when students are comparing financial aid offers and scholarship offers before they make their big decision. Make sure to keep this in mind when comparing awards.
Getting a full ride means that you have your tuition, room and board, fees, and sometimes books paid for by the university. These are fairly rare, except for D1 recruited football players etc. If you want to get a full ride for your academics, you will need to try to become a National Merit Finalist or have a high GPA and ACT score. But you won’t get a full ride to most highly-ranked universities (if you put any stock in the USNWR rankings), unless you get into a school that “meets full need” (such as Ivies) and you have a low EFC (family income below 75k usually).
Full tuition scholarships are much more common. These scholarships are not “free”: you still have to pay for room and board, books, fees, personal expenses, travel expenses, and everything else not covered by your tuition. All of these expenses can be $10k-25k. These are still rare, but definitely much less rare than full rides.
You will hear people start bragging about their “full rides” to colleges that don’t give out any full rides to non-athletes. So be aware that these are not the same thing. Younger high school students, look out for the difference. They sound the same to the untrained ear.
I would also say that people should note these things as well:
Almost all Scholarships have renewal qualifications.
When you get a full tuition (or the rare full ride) scholarship, be sure that you know and follow the requirements to KEEP it (i.e. GPA, service, honors courses, credit hours, etc.) Understand what you must do to keep it and factor this in when choosing schools. Then, do your best to meet those requirements!. Most scholarships are renewable all 4 years, so long as you meet the demands.
Generally Grants are not the same as Scholarships.
I’ve known more than one family whose child arbitrarily lost a grant in year 2 or 3, or had the amount lessened dollar for dollar when their child received an outside scholarship. If your package has a grant, ask if the amount in the wonderful Freshman aid package is guaranteed for all 4 years and if not what determines whether or not it continues.
Also fees are not always included if you get free tuition.
You need to check if the tuition scholarship will increase if tuition increases. Or if you switch schools within a university (i.e.A&S to engineering, which can have different tuition costs).
Some schools will charge you for their health insurance, unless you apply and qualify for a waiver by a certain deadline.
And adding to,the above…some scholarships are major restricted. You need to see if yours is…or not. If it IS, you need to find out what happens if you decide to switch majors.
Also–if your financial aid award letter says “grant from college” = $45,000 = that is NOT a merit scholarship. Don’t tell your friends you got a “full tuition” merit scholarship. You likely got need based aid. Which is great…I’m not knocking it. But telling them it is a full tuition scholarship throws kids off and makes them believe it is possible for them the next year when in fact it was aid awarded based on your specific family situation and not applicable to others.
Also, be aware that that number will change when your siblings graduate from college.
Parents:
Full Tuition and other scholarships have a way of making folks SO excited that they really do forget to realistically see if, even with the big bucks the school is giving, they can pay for the remaining, often still substantial costs.
You and your child can’t begin to make an informed decision regarding scholarships and such unless you have your own ducks in a row about what you will contribute. Before the euphoria of the scholarship takes over completely, look at the numbers and see if you can afford the school. Be realistic about what you are able/willing to pay directly to the college/university each year, and for travel costs, spending money, etc. Really think this through. Don’t blind side your child. Be sure they know also what you expect from them (summer job? paying for their books? ).
This stuff is really only available to recruited athletes and the tippy top students. Aside from the students represented here on CC, the vast majority of kids will receive little to no aid.
What are you talking about?? There are plenty of scholarships for kids other than athletes, and there are plenty of colleges that give aid to students who are not in the top 5% of SAT scorers.
Another thing to add is that some schools give titles to need-based grants that include the word “scholarship.” It leads to erroneous reports and news articles of students getting scholarships to multiple Ivies, when in fact, they actually received need-based aid. (My D thought she got a scholarship to a prestigious school and I had to break the news that it was our income that actually earned that award. She clicked the link for more info and sure enough, it was actually a need-based grant.)
I remember two years ago a thread on here where college awards night was discussed that many high schools put on in the Spring. Some high schools will list names of students and the scholarship they were awarded (the big ones I guess)… But also swimming amongst those MERIT scholarships, some schools listed “scholarships” that were need based, misleading others into thinking those kids had somehow been awarded those due to merit NOT need based. Who wants to be recognized for something they had zero part in other than their parents don’t make enough money? Anyway…it was an interesting thread with lots of heated comments!
“Who wants to be recognized for something they had zero part in other than their parents don’t make enough money?”
It’s not that, it’s that they want to pretend that their “Grant” has the same merit-connotation that “Scholarship” does (or are genuinely unaware of the differences). Students get them confused all the time, especially when elite schools unhelpfully call their institutional grants “Scholarships” in the FA packages.
I’ve had two kids (and their parents) show me their kids financial packages so excitedly. They were so excited they got “a full tuition scholarship.” Which is awesome–they are fantastic kids for sure.
But they did not get a full tuition “scholarship.” One got 8K in merit and like 43K in need based aid. Congratulations–you were given something because of the cost of the school and your parents income level. It had zero to do with your merit.
(the parents wanted someone else to review to make sure there were no hidden fees, etc.)
But most of those need based ‘scholarships’ require the student to be a scholar. If the awards are from Princeton or Amherst, they still had to work hard to get in so the money is a reward for hard work (and having the right bank balance). No one would claim that the service academy salary isn’t earned by brains.
Athletic scholarship are more actually called Grants-in-aid. They have nothing to do with need, but still called a grant. In aid.
She clicked the link for more info and sure enough, it was actually a need-based grant.)