Hello!
I was recently accepted to Stanford University, and would really like to attend, but need to get as much financial aid as possible before committing. My parents make too much money to get me a lot of need-based scholarships, but they also aren’t paying for my college, so it’s just sort of a sticky situation!
I’ve noticed lots of scholarships for UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc. and was wondering if anyone knew of some scholarships specific to Stanford? That would be a great help! I don’t mind writing essays! Also, I’m a California resident, Christian, African American, and female, if you know of any scholarships specific to those categories! Amount doesn’t matter, because even a bunch of $200 scholarships adds up! But of course, a few $10000 scholarships wouldn’t hurt either!
Thanks in advance for any help!! This is cheesy, but: please help my dreams of attending my dream school come true!
I don’t know of any scholarships for UCLA or UCB except those given you the college’s departments or Regents. Where are you seeing that?
There are no essays that you can write that will pay for Stanford. People just aren’t handing out money to well off families, they are trying to get funds to low income kids who can’t go to college at all. Also, you need a 4 year plan. Random scholarships for 1.000 or so aren’t usually renewable. But you will have to hunt yourself. I would start with local ones in your area because the national ones are oversubscribed and a lot of the ones on websites are little more than scams to spam you. It is also really late and deadlines have passed. You can try each year though, and when you have a major search for professional associations that give some out (like Society of Women in Engineering.)
On your own you can get a student loan of only 5,500 for your first year. How do your parents think you can pay for college yourself with that? Why don’t your parents want you to go to college?
Your family has an income of $110k and they won’t pay anything??? Why is that???
Thankfully, Stanford gives super aid, so most of your costs will be covered, unless your parents also have a lot of assets.
However, you still will have a “parent contribution” of about $12k…and I’m not sure if there will also be a student contribution of a couple thousand. You need to expect that the “family contribution” will be about $13k (plus or minus a couple thousand)
You can’t cover that with outside scholarships. Stanford would let you cover any work-study, but outside awards would just start reducing the aid that Stanford is going to give you.
You’re going about this wrong. Any small awards that you get now, would ONLY be for frosh year anyway. Then you’d have a huge .
You were warned about this problem a year ago when you first mentioned that your family would’t be contributing anything. You kept calling schools that would admit you as “safeties” when those AREN’T safeties if you don’t have the funds to go there. You refused to add real safeties to your list. Yes, those lower UCs will accept you, but they will also hand you a $30k bill…minus any small merit you’d might get.
You need to talk to your parents and figure out a solution. Many/most of the deadlines for full awards are gone. I know that once you were accepted to S, naturally you assumed that’s where you’d be going, but unless you have another “non-scholarship” source to pay the entire “family contribution”…I don’t see how you can go.
@Mom2collegekids Please note that I do have a backup that’s already accepted me, UCR which is only about 30 minutes away, so I would go there if I couldn’t afford Stanford because I could live at home, so I wouldn’t have room and board to worry about which takes care of about 15k, plus UCR’s tuition itself is WAY cheaper than Stanford.
My parents have basically no assets and no college savings for me except like 3000 from my grandmother when I was little. Because of that, do you think I will get decent financial aid from Stanford? And if I contact them about my issue, that my parents won’t pay, do you think that will help at all? Because they are very well endowded and claim/boast about how they could give full rides to every student if they needed to.
@BrownParent My parents want me to go to college, but when my sisters and I were younger my dad didn’t want to save money for us. Now that my mom is working, she wants to help us pay, but two of my other sisters are already in college, one in grad school, and she has her own school loans. So she wants and plans to help, but can’t really make a huge difference. Plus her income is way lower than my dads, who won’t contribute anything (I’ve already asked and pleaded). Anyway, my teacher sent his students a big list of scholarships with deadlines each month this year, and a few of them were specific to UCLA or UCB students, I even saw some for Michican State etc. So I know they exist and was just wondering if any benefactors like that existed for Stanford. I guess not though? Also, if my mom cosigns a loan, can I get one bigger than 5500? I don’t want big school loans, but I really really want to go to Stanford and don’t want to let this opportunity to pass by.
,<<<<
plus UCR’s tuition itself is WAY cheaper than Stanford.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
That doesn’t matter.
Stanford is already going to give you a LOT of aid. They will expect your family to pay about $13k per year…which is about the same as UCR’s tuition. I do think that UCR may offer you a small merit award.
While it looks like you can go to UCR by the skin of your teeth (parent co-signed loans), it really isn’t a safety because you can only borrow $5500 and the commuting cost is at least $15k…so it really wasn’t a safety and there were safeties you could have applied to that wouldn’t have left you with $15k+ to cover.
Yes your mom can cosign loans, but will your dad allow that?
You need to find out what S’s policy is about how outside merit is applied. Likely it gets applied to work study first. Then it gets applied to student contribution. After that, it might not be allowed to use towards parent contribution. IT might just reduce THEIR aid.
Congrats for getting into Stanford. I hope that it works out for you.