No, son was awarded several competitive outside merit/prize type scholarships that he “won” such as it was, on his own. Two were disbursed through Scholarship America. SA seemed to have quite a bit of turnover in their employees with a new person coming in to take care of a particular program almost every year. Every time someone new came in, they would have issues sending out the next semester checks on time. I ended up being the one calling and emailing when checks didn’t arrive on time.
I did it because my daughter asked me to. She was 16 and I was following all the advice online (including CC) that students should make all contact with the school. It was just too much for her. It started even before the FAFSA because she was a recruited athlete and we were juggling athletic aid with merit aid and some state funds. She just looked at me and said “Would you deal with this?” The coach at the school she ended up at was new so she didn’t really understand the school’s merit awards or state grants.
Other kid is no good at math and just lets me do it. I had her do it one summer and she missed a deadline and it cost her (not me) $2000.
I’m pretty good at it and enjoy it, so why not? I also did their taxes and really, there was no way they could do them as their taxes depended on mine and my depended on theirs. They were also in school in April when I was doing them. I’d do them, call each kid and say “I’m going to push the button” and they’d say okay.
In this household, FAFSA and CSS apps were a 3-partner effort performed by Me, Myself, and I.
For scholarship opportunities, he is helping (mostly with essays and such) but I don’t mind doing most of the heavy lifting as far as locating/discovering the scholarships, initiating the apps, being mindful of deadlines, etc. In the end, any scholarship awarded is money I don’t have to spend. This is no time for me to try to teach him a lesson about filling out applications or something.
Kiddo did everything, college apps, financial form, scholarships, school/ class selections, etc you name it, everything on her own and on time. Of course we had to give her with the income/saving info to fill out the financial form but she drove everything to completion. She keeps us in the loop and we talked though stuff but she owns the tasks.
It’s an honor if she asked me to do anything for her. It’s so rare that when she does I jump with joy. She asked me if I could do some research on housing for next year she wants to live in and apartment with her roommates. I am on a mission. If I didn’t do a thorough job on this she won’t ask me for help again lol,
With my HS freshman son, it won’t be that easy. I am sure we will have to do the financial stuff for him. As for the rest he will have to be managed/reminded.
DD’19 had 4 local scholarships that I had to track down. One needed multiple reminders. If I ever run a scholarship, I will strive to be much more communicative and timely!
I located scholarships, kept track of deadlines, pushed her to get them done, followed up on payment. DD did the applications/essays/interviews/audition. I’m an accountant and paralegal who loves the research and organization and she…does not! But she has the academic, writing, and acting skills that get the money.
I did the FAFSA too, I think she may have sat with me the first time. We don’t get anything from it, so it’s not a huge important thing she needs to know about.
Parents did FAFSA/financial stuff, kid did everything else.
We definitely were not going to give our 16-17 year old our financial information. We were full pay but had to fill out one financial form for a merit scholarship. We did not even allow her to see the form.
We sat down and did the FAFSA together. Scholarships I think will be more of a me finding them and reminding him of deadlines, and him filling them out and doing the essays.
I did it for eleven long years. The kids after high school aren’t even around come FAFSA time and it would take more time to fill them in on our finances, try to connect by phone, follow up and all that nonsense than to sit down and do it. Plus we are a family where H and I paid the college bills so it just makes sense to manage the college financing. The other plus is that college financial aid offices certainly know who pays the bills and aren’t under the illusion that the vast majority of kids are not paying their own bills so they are much quicker to respond to parents than to kids if there are questions or something comes up. I also do taxes for the whole extended family so it was super easy to get 'er done each year.
I did the FAFSA as long as the kids were dependent for FAFSA purposes. I’m self-employed & also divorced – so tax returns are complicated & there was info not shown on tax returns that needed to be entered (such as the money I was receiving from my ex for child support for the younger child when the older one went off to college). Plus FAFSA needed to correspond with CSS Profile, which asks for even more info. Some of the info needed was hard for me to chase down. So definitely not a job for my kids. Once the kids were independent for FAFSA purposes (over age 24) – then I had no involvement.