<p>Freaking out bc my "award" letter says I have to pay 48k+ all in loans -.- Are there any scholarships/grants for UIUC???</p>
<p>I have 1470 math+readin and 2260 combined SAT, 500+hours volunteering yadayada</p>
<p>Income is 80k/year not including taxes and to sink 48k every year is ridiculous.</p>
<p>If you are out of state for Illinois and it looks like you are with that price tag, then you probably are NOT going to get much if any financial aid from the school. The school only meets full need for about 22% of the students as it is. You are OOS, so you come AFTER the in state kids, and the school cannot even meet all of their need fully.</p>
<p>Your family income of $80K a year makes you ineligible for PELL grants. And UI is saying that they are not going to be giving you ANY of their money. All you can get are the Stafford loans. Though you have great test scores, UI does not want to give you any merit money for them. I don’t even know how their merit awards work and if OOS are eligible for much if any, but you were not selected for any of them. You can call Admissions and ask, and you can also contact Fin AId, but the state of Illinois is not doing so well, to put it mildly, in terms of finances and I don’t think there is much money to give out, especially to someone who has not been paying state taxes. </p>
<p>Many state schools are accepting OOSers to get the OOS premium. So it defeats that purpose of using you all as cash cows, if you get university money to discount the price. Your full cost payment helps subsidize those instate students. It’s not just UI that is doing this, but any number of schools like UMich, UVA, Penn State, some of them really gauging OOSers on the price differential. There is a reason why that differential is so high==to bring in much needed money.</p>
<p>So check it out, and then look at your more affordable options. Your state school will be much more affordable and if you applied to some private schools, your family expected payment might be less than the $50K that UI is charging. I don’t think UI is worth $50K a year.</p>
<p>At $48K/yr COA, are you then OOS engineering or business? The biggest general scholarship available to OOS is ‘university achievement’, $12K/yr. Contact fin. aid to see if they are still giving these out. Individual depts have their own scholarships, like ‘engineering excellence’ $7500/yr. You need to contact your dept to see if they are still dispensing awards for freshmen for this fall and what type and quantity they give out. Engineering is extremely competitive at UIUC, so if that is your field, it is possible that your stats are not high enough to get scholarship. But that is just a guess. I may be wrong. Search the UIUC forum for merit aid and scholarships to see old threads on this topic.</p>
<p>Are these awards for which a student has to apply, or are all candidates screened for them, and the awards given out already?</p>
<p>You are OOS, so you come AFTER the in state kids, and the school cannot even meet all of their need fully.</p>
<p>The above words should be a sticky for all applicants to OOS publics. Instate students should be “first in line” for the limited aid because their parents are paying taxes AND their COAs are much lower. However, even wiith their lower COAs, most publics can’t meet need for instate students either.</p>
<p>Publics charge high OOS rates for a reason, the parents aren’t paying taxes there. It makes little sense to give need-based aid to cover those high OOS costs. UVA and UNC do, but since they accept few OOS students and those students have high stats, it can be argued that any aid they get has a merit component. </p>
<p>The public univs in America are nobody’s oyster. ;)</p>
<p>cptofthehouse- for the university achievement and other general scholarships everyone is considered automatically. My D received this, no special app. UIUC has 2 app deadlines and she was music w audition, so RD and since there were still some left, so they must hold some back for RD. I don’t know if they have all been awarded, don’t know process or #s. In music, everyone is considered for dept. merit aid and that is awarded separately, a bit later, she already received that. Don’t know policies of other depts.</p>
<p><a href=“https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/display/ugadvise/Scholarships[/url]”>https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/display/ugadvise/Scholarships</a></p>
<p>It seems like most of the general freshman engineering scholarships, for example, are auto-considered, though there are also some outside scholarships they promote which have special apps. Many of their scholarships require US citizenship/green card or have other more restrictive criteria.</p>
<p>thnx guys:P don’t think im going to uiuc then…</p>