There are exceedingly few 4-year renewable merit awards that cover even the full amount of tuition, let alone room and board. Most full tuition or full ride merit awards seem to go to those with hooks and are rarely based only upon objective academic merit, so if you are lucky to get a larger one then it could indeed cover room and board as well, once tuition is covered. Merit awards are generally applied before any need-based awards are calculated, but otherwise multiple awards can stack in many cases. There may be exceptions.
@illinoisx3. Thank you very much for the answer. I hope you are right. Our D19 is fortunate enough to receive the provost and campus honors, and currently waiting on the business honors. It can be a deciding factor for her as she makes a decision in March or April.
congrats! What stats? Incidentally, I think many awards are capped so the total cannot exceed tuition+R/B but maybe some allow other official expenses or a stipend.
Thank you. Here is a quick summary of her stats. In-state, 36, 3.98 & 4.7, NMSF and decent EC and essays. With many others having similar stats, particularly in CS, we do feel very fortunate.
I’m a current student in CS/EngPhys. I wouldn’t worry about James Scholar, it’s fairly easy to get into it after your freshman year if your grades are good.
Also if anyone has any questions that you’d want a current student to answer, feel free to ask.
@literallymarx hi, i’ve been admitted to uiuc as an eng phy major and i wanted to know about the course load of the program and what engineering opportunities do we have or is it just physics?
It’s mostly just Physics. The main difference between EngPhys and LAS Physics is that EngPhys has a secondary concentration which has physics-adjacent content. For example I’m doing the Computational Physics concentration.
https://physics.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduates/ep-options.html
As for actual course-load, I would say it’s manageable. The 400-level labs are exhausting and time-consuming though (3-5 hours straight in a lab), but you don’t need to worry about them until you’re an upperclassman. For the more theoretical classes, I don’t think the homework load was ever bad.
@literallymarx thanks for the insight
Hi, has anyone heard back from the Gies Business Honors Program for interviews? Confirmation email for completed application says decisions will come out on Friday, February 8th and I’m a little nervous about not getting an email for interviews with how close the 8th is.
Hi, does anyone know if EA students still have a chance for campus honors, perhaps when RD rolls out? Im OOS and hoping scholarships can help alleviate costs. Also wondering how many other scholarship I have a chance at, considering there are very few OOS awards 
My stats are decent, but there are definitely students better than me
-34 ACT (35 superscored)
-4.0 uw / 4.2 w
-5s in ap bio, lang, calc ab; 4 in apush
-4 completed college courses; elementary chem, intro databases, intro object orientated programming, intro psychology (college gpa 4.0)
-taking ap stats, lit, gov/econ
-taking 2 more college courses (personal finance, anthropology)
-decent ecs (jobs, sport/leadership, theater run-crew, internships)
-hopefully good essay (tone wasn’t very formal/tried to make interesting but still had content)
-EA Civ E, James Scholar, OOS
good luck to everyone waiting on scholarship news!
@eggstremelyeggy, Acceptances to honors programs (other than business college which requires a separate application after being admitted) all come within about three weeks after EA admission, You got James Scholar (which has no scholarship attached), but there will not likely be another. It is also unlikely you will get a university sponsored scholarship unless already informed, but one awarded by engineering department is still a possibility.
@drusba sad news but thanks! 
Also, has anyone participated in the WIE-IEFX scholars program? Got an email, wondering if I should apply…
Are scholarships still being sent out?
I got the James Scholar too. Does anyone know what benefits it has to offer?
James Scholar has no scholarship attached. For some of your courses, there will be honors sections that you can take, which are reserved for students in honors programs. If you remain in the program, you will eventually graduate with honors. Many consider the best advantage of being a James Scholar is priority registration, in that honors students get to register for classes shortly before others in the same class level, and thus can find courses they want in times of day considered desirable. Note, that to remain a James Scholar from semester to semester, you have to maintain a 3.5 GPA (which as many know is not necessarily easy).
this is a great perk especially one intend to take high demand cross disciplinary courses (e.g. an ECE student intend to take CS course), even within a single discipline (especially CS and ECE) it will help to beat the rush for high demand courses. According to my son it is worth it as he is JS.
oh also note, CS doesn’t let James Scholars get priority registration for classes anymore (as of 2017), so the benefits can be and are limited. CS classes are limited by cohort (e.g. people who are seniors by semesters in uni, not by credit hours, get first dibs)
James Scholar is a nice thing to add a line to your resume, but doesn’t mean that much.
Most of the honors sections for classes are just an additional project which is what you make of it.
Refer to links for honors program directly
https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/honors
https://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/honors.html (CS JS has more stringent requirements)
Anyone got an invite for Stamps Scholarship interview next week? Do you know about how many students are chosen for this interview?