ny mom

Unfortunately, my D did not qualify for the NHSP (low PSAT scores) but, there does appear to be some other scholarships for which she qualifies.

We are looking at a few private schools and some state (yes, NY mom loves SUNY schools!). How does it work re: need. Her first year, she will most likely qualify for some aid because my son will still be in school, BUT beyond that, is it possible to piece together random scholarships to defray most of the cost and still come out to equal a year at a SUNY, which is about 16000?

We are looing at Northeastern and as a reach Cornell. Thanks

entomom

When you refer to "random scholarships", do you mean merit based outside (as opposed to Institutional) scholarships? If so, the one caution I have is that many outside scholarships are for entering freshmen and many are for only the first year. And while there are some for the later years in college, I wouldn't recommend counting on getting them in order to fund 16k/yr.

For Institutional scholarships, again, most are for entering freshmen. However, there are some through Colleges or majors within a university for post-freshman year. Again thought, it would be scary to count on getting these in the future to fund college. I'm not from NY, so I'm not familiar with merit based scholarships at the SUNY schools. For NEU, do you think your D is in the running for the Bunche, Lewis or Connections (Engineering) scholarships?

As far as need based FA, have you run FAFSA and Profile estimators? While FAFSA estimators can give a pretty good calculation of EFC, each Profile school uses their own fomula, so EFCs can vary slightly or widely between colleges.