Many of the merit scholarships (including Biz Scholars) are freshman year only. The idea is to discount the OOS tuition rate you are paying until you qualify for instate rates in year 2 onwards. $12000 is about three quarters of the ~$16K difference between OOS and instate. The WUE supplement is just over $2000 per semester so essentially the same $16K over four years.
Note some of the other constraints on WUE: it doesn’t include fees (which can be quite material for online or lab courses) and it only covers up to 18 credits per semester (it is unclear if that means additional credits are charged at OOS rates). You also need to maintain a 3.0 GPA throughout your course to retain the scholarship. So if you lose the scholarship you will have to spend another whole year paying OOS tuition later on, because time spent in WUE status doesn’t count for residency purposes.
Tuition and fees breakdown are here:
You can see that fees are about $650 per semester, but you need to add online or lab fees to that - the total is likely to be $1600 to $2000 total per year.
The ballet schedule is essentially fixed (starting at 8am every morning Mon-Fri!). Freshmen have a gap between 9.30 and 11.30am which allows for another class or two, and also have time in the afternoon unless they are cast in a performance - unfortunately you won’t know that until after auditions (which are in the first week of the fall semester in August, so it is a good idea to stay in shape over the summer, especially given the altitude adjustment which is a shock to many people when you first get to SLC).
The counsellors know that there may be conflicts and if there is a clash between a mandated honors class and a mandated class for your major then you can choose another honors session to avoid the clash (rehearsals are usually arranged to align with other class commitments too). For second majors there are many opportunities to take asynchronous online classes to mitigate conflicts.
The biggest issue is that you will need to overload well beyond 15 credits per semester to take all the required classes in four years. Ballet BFA is about 80 credits, second majors are typically 50 or so, then you have 10-20 more for honors and 5-20 for general ed, depending on AP credits and overlap between general ed and your major(s). Expect to need about 150-160 credits total (excluding AP credits) for a BFA double major with honors. Staying for the first summer (which offers a full semester worth of classes, unlike many other colleges) is a big help to fit the extra courses in.
Thanks for the info about the call last night. Good news about WUE … and I agree with your opinion that the U, like other non-California schools that my S has applied to, really seems to be competing for students. Like they really want the students to choose the U. With the UCs, it feels like they don’t need to compete, so they don’t. The other thing I like about the U is that it is a smaller school. The other schools my S is considering are all 30k students, so very large. I believe the U is something like 18K students.
Not sure what your S is interested in as a major, but do you know anything about the math and physics departments at the U?
Hi y’all! For the scholarship’s General Application it says “some scholarships are designed to support students who are engaging with their campus and community in service, extracurricular activities, and leadership experiences. Please indicate how you engage in your campus and local community in service, extracurricular, and leadership activities.”
Should I make it a list format with short explanations or an essay explaining everything briefly, what I learned, how it impacted me, etc? It asks for extracurriculars and work experience on the Eccles scholarship page as well (after you fill out the general).
If no one knows, I’ll call tomorrow and update everyone. Thanks!
Thank you for all of your advice a few weeks ago. We are scheduling our trip to Utah finally. S21 seems more and more interested in the CS with EAE program there so I think we might actually have a top school even before hearing from most of his instate CA schools!
I have booked the Marriott University Center hotel since it looks like it’s right on campus. I’m hoping someone can let me know that it’s actually a clean and well cared for hotel? I’m a very easy to please person except for hotels, so I get a little nervous when the price is a low as it was for this one. Will I be able to sleep there or will I be scrubbing corners with Clorox all night long? If there is somewhere better that is near campus I would love to hear about it. Assuming S21 chooses Utah, we are saving the resorts up the hill for a longer family trip this summer.
We have taken your advice and added a night so that we can see some of the additional area. I’m extremely excited to finally see this campus that I’ve been looking at virtually for so long.
I don’t know that hotel (we tend to use the Hilton brand), but the chain hotels in SLC have all been good, clean and cheap in my experience. However assuming you mean the hotel on Wakara Way it’s not right on campus (it’s in the research park across the creek), and it would be a little inconvenient to walk over (not many sidewalks and 20-30 mins walk), so you’ll probably need to drive (and you’ll certainly need to drive to dinner if you go out to a restaurant). I don’t think it has many advantages (other than possibly price) over staying downtown where you can walk to dinner.
The university guesthouse is actually on campus and has always been good, but it’s been used for COVID isolation cases from the student dorms this year so probably isn’t a great idea right now.
It is a very nice hotel. You will be pleased. I am from Pennsylvania and stayed there before COVID. My son skated in a competition at one of the former Olympic ice venues. The Olympics was in 2002 but everything is still beautifully maintained.
Yes, the Wakara Way hotel is the one I was looking at. Thank you for the location heads up. I just looked at it on google maps satellite and it really doesn’t look like a pleasant walk. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks again for your help.
We stayed at the guesthouse the first time we went and liked it, but as noted above I’m not sure it’s wise right now (you could call and ask if they are still hosting infected students). Otherwise we just assume we’ll have to drive, it’s very quick getting to/from downtown anyway. There is paid hourly parking on campus off South Campus Drive just up from the football stadium.
Downtown a lot of the nice places to eat (we like Red Rock Brewery, Blue Iguana and Copper Onion but only the last has outdoor seating IIRC) are in the four blocks to the south of Temple Square (ie north of 89, aka 400 South) and there are hotels in and around that area, though sometimes they are a bit more expensive and/or charge for parking, if that’s the case we go to the hotels just south of 89 where prices drop quite quickly.
When we want to get out easily to the ski slopes we tend to stay south of the University on Foothill Drive (Hwy 186) which is the main route out to I-80E and I-215S.
“Scholarship and Financial Aid offers will be sent beginning March 2021. Your admissions application is your scholarship application.”
I really think it said March 1 in the past, not 'beginning in March." Just thought I’d share incase March 1 comes and goes and a bunch of us get concerned.
Even if you stay downtown nothing is very far from the campus. If you rent a car then you can drive and park. If you don’t rent a car (or even if you do) try taking TRAX so your student can see what that’s like. It’s easy to get to the bottom (stadium) and top (dorms) of campus with TRAX. Others have already chimed in but we have stayed in the University Guest House before and it was fine. Typically we have done airbnb for our other visits.
My son received his weekly “Events for You” email. Today’s email changed from events for prospective students to events for admitted students. Portal still has not changed. I feel like this means that he was admitted and just waiting for the portal to catch up.
My daughter received a “Financial Aid Award” document last night (she has already been accepted, we are out of state in CT). When she got her acceptance letter I was really disappointed to not see any merit, but I wrote an email back in mid-January and they said back then that merit and financial aid packets would come out in “early March”. So I was relieved.
But now we received the financial aid document, and it had no mention of merit anywhere in it. I am hoping since it is only Feb 27th, this does not mean merit is off the table. No merit for us would likely cross Utah off of her list, despite it being at the top, as it would not be competitive with the offers she already has in hand from higher ranked schools - but she really loved Utah and we plan to fly out to visit if they do provide merit. Crossing my fingers this financial aid document is not the merit piece.
On another note, what I found interesting was that this financial aid document had a number our family could afford, and then a financial aid award. The financial aid was just the standard $5500 from the federal loans, and it was far short of the “need”. In that sense, Utah wasn’t even meeting the financial need. Is that normal?
