Where to start getting information?

Paying for College
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Friends of mine are the legal guardians for their granddaughter. The granddaughter’s parents are not involved in the child’s life and have limited to no financial resources. The granddaughter is a straight A student in honors track courses and seems like she could be a good candidate for some kind of scholarship or grant. The grandparents are very unfamiliar with the college application process and are looking for help in navigating the world of grants, financial aid, etc. What is a good place for them to start getting information?

They are in Pennsylvania in case there are any special scholarships or programs that might be available through the state university system.

Also, does anyone know if the financial assets of the guardians will be weighed in determining the child’s needs?

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If the grandparents are legal guardians…and did not adopt this child…the student would be independent for financial,aid purposes. The incime and assets of her grandparents will not be considered in the FAFSA formula ans most Profile school formulas.

But really…all this would mean is that this student would likely get the maximum Pell of bout $5800 per year, and an additional $4000 per year in Direct Loans.

I would urge you and them to read through the links in this thread:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html#latest

There is a lot of information on scholarships and lower cost schools. This young lady sounds like a strong student. She could be a contender for decent merit aid someplace.

@CourtneyThurston maybe you can give this family info about Questbridge and Gates Scholarships. Perhaps those are options too.

Unless she gets something like Gates or Questbridge, the best scholarships and aid would come direct,y from the colleges. The student needs to target schools where she has a strong likelihood of getting accepted…ans where the school has generous merit and/or need based aid.

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Are the parents court appointed guardians (more than just having signature rights to sign for medical and educational decisions)?

PA isn’t great with aid. PA schools are pricey and aid is often poor.

Tell the grands that their granddaughter needs to practice for the ACT and SAT…those will be her ticket for better aid and scholarships.

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I would suggest she look at the Horatio Alger Scholarship, it is given for both financial need and overcoming adversity, which this girl likely has done.

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@thumper1 Gates is over now. This was its last year. Only QuestBridge and Jack Kent Cooke exist now. QB matches an extraordinarily low number of students (I think around 100?) and JKCF gives out 90-95 scholarships. So, essentially, these shouldn’t factor into planning.

Gates was the heavy hitter by number of scholarships awarded, and unfortunately that program’s gone.

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Any other suggestions @CourtneyThurston

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Those are the only last-dollar/full ride ones I know of now. There’s the new Coolidge Scholarship for juniors, but I heard they only accept 2(?) scholars.

Honestly the best strategy is to pursue merit. And, unfortunately for OP, Pennsylvania is pretty awful for state aid (grew up in PA and only moved right before freshman year in college)

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I have personal experience with this situation. Assuming grandparents have full legal guardianship granted in a court of law:

Student files FAFSA as independent.
CSS Profile may vary by college although it can only be filed once! 5 of 6 colleges wanted guardian’s financial info. One wanted student to file Profile as independent. 5 out of 6 colleges waived the noncustodial parent form. One wanted both bio parents to file it (Profile only allows one noncustodial form).
I personally contacted each Director of FinAid and kept notes. Sometimes I had to say Well another college wants it this way, and then the Director might say Well that will be fine, I’ll make a note in the file. For the college that wanted the student to file the Profile, I just added a note explaining that we also completed the “parent” sections because other colleges wanted that.
Hallelujah she is going to a FAFSA-only college so we don’t have to deal with the Profile anymore.
Excellent FinAid packages including merit at two midwestern LACs, both FAFSA only.

In our case guardian income low enough to qualify for need based aid. But in any case, I highly recommend including some FAFSA only colleges in the mix.

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I have helped foster children get into Notre Dame and Cornell, but you have to have the stats to get into a full ride school. Meaning very high test scores in addition to good grades and honors/AP.

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^ Yeah, exactly. It always irks me when people suggest “Oh, just apply to the Ivies” like that’s a valid financial aid strategy for everyone. Many students just cannot get admitted – but may have the stats to get merit scholarships elsewhere.

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What do you mean by THIS?

The Profile can be submitted to different schools…and this does NOT need to happen all at once.

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Have her look at 100% need-met schools. If she is financially independent and has the grades, she could go to a very good school for short money.

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@Frydaddy A very good book you should recommend to them is “The College Solution” by Lynn O’Shaughnessy. She is a former journalist with a financial background and has been writing on the financial aspects of college admissions. She has a website by the same name as well as a facebook page. She will answer questions on both those forums. The information in the book is excellent and we used her advice to gain a full-ride for our first child and a great college for our second. There are also other good resources mentioned in The College Solution.

As I think others have mentioned, the best merit money comes directly from colleges. Penn State is not great, but some state public schools that are generous with merit money for out of state students are Alabama, Ohio State (National Buckeye Scholarship), Miami of Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, and Minnesota to name a few. It is important to understand that most public universities do not give financial aid to out of state students so if the student needs a lot of financial aid, then the out of state public universities on the student’s list should be those that give very good merit money similar to Alabama’s great merit for high stat students with great test scores.

As far as private colleges, the student should look at those that meet “full financial need.” A good resource for determining what percentage of need is on the website collegedata.com. Look under the “money matters” tab and towards the middle of the page it will be listed the percentage of need met by the college. There is a good search function on collegedata where you can pull up the percentage of the meets full-needs colleges to help the student create her list.

Following the advice given previously, have the grandparents run the numbers to get the student’s “estimated financial contribution” or “EFC”. For each college on the student’s list, they should run the college’s net price calculator. The College Solution can give you detailed information on those terms and how to go about doing those calculations.

It has been my experience that the best merit scholarship money is available during the early rounds of of college admission through students applying “early action” to those colleges that offer that type of admission scenario. Make sure the student and grandparents are aware that some colleges have earlier deadlines for applying for students seeking merit money. I would caution against applying “early decision” where a student has significant financial need since acceptance “binds” the student to attending that particular college.

If the grandparents need more information about helping the student do the actual application then I suggest two resources in addition to CC. One is “Admission Possible” and there is a book and website by the same name. http://admissionpossible.com I use it a lot with my students and it lays out the process really well, has sample items and gives good tips. The author recently wrote a great article in the Huffington Post that basically is a guide for what a student should do this summer in preparing their applications and about the changes to the essays for some of the applications. I suggest the students and grandparents review it. Here is the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-hansen-shaevitz/heads-up-the-3-most-impor_b_10053804.html

The other resource I like is the book “College Admission” and website "http://collegeadmissionbook.com/. It looks like they are not updating their blog as previously done, but the previous posts are still very informative. I would “like” their facebook page since it looks like that is where they are doing their updates. The information, tips and resources from the book, my students have found very helpful. This step by step guide to filling out the common application by the authors is particularly helpful. http://collegeadmissionbook.com/sites/default/files/TheApplicationForm.pdf

OP-you are very kind to help out these grandparents. Encourage them to come to CC to ask any questions they may have since the posters here try to be very helpful. Good luck.

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I forgot to include a link to a really good guide for filling out the FASFA. https://www.edvisors.com/fafsa/book/user-info/ This organization has helped my students for free in completing the FASFA as well as answer other questions.

I also forgot to mention the site “Nerd Wallet” and this helpful guide on being a student who has absent parents. As previously mentioned the student will have to ask for a “dependency override” from each college. https://www.nerdwallet.com/nerdscholar/fafsa/guide/dependency-override

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I think they meant while you submit the CSS profile once, and it goes to a number of schools, many profile schools will ask for supplemental information.

being declared independent due to legal guardianship for FAFSA only schools, does nto necessarily mean that you will be deemed independent for CSS profile schools or that schools that are generous with their own institutional aid. This is especially true if biological parents are still alive and the family situation has not been irreparabily broken as people get legal guardianship for a number of different reasons.

I do think that some people are oversimplying this has it can be a long drawnout process, whith different schools asking for different pieces of information,

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If she is in PA and has high stats she could still apply to schools in PA, esp. private universities and LACs. She might qualify for FA or merit or both at some of them.

She needs some schools where she knows that remaining costs will be covered with federal, state grants and federal student loans.

Does she have any income, significant savings in her name? You could run the Collegeboard EFC calculator to see if she would have $0 EFC. Also run net price calculators on college website for estimates on aid.

A student with $0 EFC can qualify for up to $5800 of Pell grant, (PA grant goes up to about $4000), subsidized loan of $3500 and unsubsidized loan of $2000.

Last year Temple U gave full tuition for 3.8 GPA and 32 ACT.

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Does she know what she might want to study?

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^sorry forgot that student as independent for FAFSA would qualify for additional $4000 in loans.

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Thank you everybody for all this information – this will be super helpful.

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Temple is great for merit if the student has reasonably high stats and wants to stay in PA. Their merit standards are also slightly lower for in-state students.