<p>I have a rising HS junior. When is that time for us to start looking and applying for the scholarships?</p>
<p>What scholarships? From schools?</p>
<p>No. Just general scholarships.</p>
<p>It is still early for you, but you can start looking around for eligible scholarships that you may apply next year. Check your local library to see if they have those scholarships index books. There are also websites for that. The large ones are usually due in the Fall/Winter of your senior year due to the volume of applications they expected. Most other ones would be due around later Winter to early Spring.</p>
<p>Are you the parent or student?</p>
<p>general scholarships are nice but they dont really help much with paying for college. Many/most are for frosh year only, are for a small amount, have a need component, and are hard to get. </p>
<p>If you need merit to help pay for college, then you need to apply to the RIGHT schools that will give them for your stats…also considering the amount that you will need.</p>
<p>I think in another thread you mentioned that you will need about $30k in merit for privates. Does that mean that you can pay about 25k-30k per year?</p>
<p>If you need 30k in merit, then you need nearly a full tuition award. Those are harder to get in Calif. I know that schools like USD, USF, SCU give merit awards, but dont know how many or if they even give near full tuition awards. If so, they would likely be highly competitive.</p>
<p>Sounds like you need some financial safeties. </p>
<p>In addition to what mom2collegekids said, sometimes scholarships will not even reduce your out of pocket cost. My D received scholarships and grant from school without loan or workstudy (they were replaced by grant from the school in the official package). When the money from her external scholarships arrive, the school just reduce the amount of grant accordingly (as we have no loan or work study). This policy varies with schools though.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone. So what do people normally do? I know we are not going to qualify for a need base financial aid since we are a working middle class. I know that we will not be able to retire until age of 150 if we have to pay 54K per year for undergrad and then for grad. I know that I can not let my D to graduate with over 200K in loans. She is a good student and might qualify for a merit scholarship, but I do not know how difficult to get merit scholarships in California. With her stats she can get a free ride at some other state schools, like University of Alabama, but she wants to stay in California. She will be applying to UCs, but I would like to explore private university options as well.</p>
<p>The best scholarships would be from within the school. Those are usually renewable for all years. External ones are usally for freshman and are one time deals, but they still help. The best bet for you would be looking at in state with merit aids. op privates rarely offer merit aid but just need based aids. You may use their NPC to estimate your cost. In general, California is very competitive to get merit aid. It is also harder to be NMSF than most other states.</p>
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<p>Well, you ask what people do (who cant pay what schools in their area want them to pay)…well, you cant always get everything you want. You sometimes have to relax some parameters…geography, distance, higher ranks, and so forth.</p>
<p>Calif schools are generally bad with merit. The schools that do give merit (USF, USD, LMU and some others) usually dont give full tuition awards. There may be some lesser known smaller privates that will (Whittier? Redlands? St Mary’s?), but they may not have desired majors or may be too small. </p>
<p>Which privates do you want to explore? </p>
<p>How much merit do you want? How much do you want to pay each year?</p>
<p>For instance, if you want to only pay $15k per year, then your D needs a full tuition scholarship so that the $15k can pay for room, board, books, fees, travel, misc. So, if you want to find a scholarship-awarding private that will give your child a full tuition award, then her stats need to be in the top 1-5% of the school to have a chance. To get those huge awards, the student has to be a rare student because many schools only award a small number of full tuition awards. </p>
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<p>If she has an ACT 32+ or 1400 M+CR SAT then some lower UCs may offer her some merit. again, how much do you need?</p>
<p>In California, the public universities don’t have a lot of merit money. Even NM winners don’t get a full ride. She needs to apply to the privates, since the CA public universities just don’t fund full rides.</p>
<p>But in state tuition at CA is likely cheaper than privates. Also, top privates are less likely to offer merit aid but need based aids. The out of pocket cost is still likely cheaper at an in state public school. Michigan also does not offer any scholarship to NM, not to mention full ride. However, the in state CoA is half of most private schools. Unless you can find a private school that can offer merit aid to cover the difference in CoA, I still think in state public to be more affordable.even without aid from school.</p>