Good to know, thanks.
Question – how did you claim the tax credit? It was my understanding that if you’re not paying any educational expenses, you can’t claim the credit.
^^ There is a danger in posting information based on anecdotes and lacking knowledge. Room and board is taxable unless specifically excluded. The reality is that scholarships are taxable but subject to a number of exclusions. One adds all the reported income and matches it with qualified expenses and exemptions. The short version is that some scholarships are “tax free” but this is because of corresponding exclusions.
The cost of room and board might be offset by exemptions, but it is rather difficult for dependent students.
You should change CPA and retain one that knows a bit about educational expenses.
Regarding QB
http://www.questbridge.org/for-students/ncm-who-should-apply#addtlcitizenship
Eligibility
In order to be eligible to apply for the National College Match in the fall of 2015, applicants must graduate from high school during or before the summer of 2016 and plan to enroll as a freshman in college in the fall of 2016.
The QuestBridge National College Match is open to all:
U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents
Students, regardless of citizenship, currently attending high school in the United States
I never said for sure room and board is not taxable. I said, every step of the way, that I’m unsure and checking up on it.
Let’s not make this a debate about taxes. I am doing my due diligence, and I think posters have already expressed that room and board is taxable under all circumstances.
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So the million dollar question is how to figure out what matters to the administrators?
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I think so. Almost every program I won had their own twist. Coke was extremely community service hours heavy (the average 2015 Scholar had around ~1200 hours in high school). GE-Reagan seemed to give heavy weight to kids involved in agricultural programs. AXA only wants students to talk about one thing they’ve done, and you sorta have to figure out how to explain what the motivation for your project was, etc, without making it sound like you’re talking about multiple activities.
Beyond this, Scholarship America and ISTS both have their own formats. I think it’s important to have both quantity and quality when filling out these apps; you’re unlikely to make the weed-out cuts if you can’t fill enough lines, but you’re unlikely to win if none of those many lines are personally meaningful to you. In short, be a jack of all trades and master of one.
I won’t be saying anything more on the tax front. Students and parents who are reading this thread can reference Publication 970.
This.
If he’s that misinformed about scholarship taxability, and you say that you have a very complicated tax situation anyway, he might be leading you down the wrong path.
Courtney,
Thanks so much for such a comprehensive answer and for sharing your experience with us. You are right; tax situation a side, it is a small price to pay for your education.
@sybbie719 Sure thing!
One point of clarification – while you’ll get hammered for having an income of over ~50k in the Elks program, it’s still possible to get the National Finalist scholarship ($4000). You just need high points in other point categories. This is basically what happened to me; made it to the national scholarship level as a finalist, but did not advance. Calculated out my own points and everything.
So the takeaway is that sometimes you don’t even need to win to get a scholarship.
The 4000$ one was 500 students out of something like 19500 applicants. Not the worst odds out there as far as outside scholarships go.
I think it might help to gave a little bit of your background to give context.
The fact that you were self supporting in a city with an internship at what I am assuming was a young age speaks volumes. Adding to that, you mentioned earning scholarships that value extensive community service. I am guessing that you are extremely intelligent, resourceful, talented, driven and hard working.
My point is that as students read your excellent advice that they also recognize that this was an amazing feat.
This member is hardly your run of the mill HS graduate. She is highly identifiable as she uses her real name.
Thanks Courtney, I was just trying to look up actual financial eligibility for some students and when they say must have need it isn’t clear. Some are higher income than you, some about the same, but will have a gap between EFC and COA.
Courtney did you write a program to generate scholarships lists on your scholarship finder service? It is certainly a modest fee (Mods I hop it is okay to link, other people discuss more commercial services here.
http://www.courtneythurston.com/scholarship-consulting.html
Good to know about the JKC scholarship, I think the transfer scholarship is more well known. Thanks for teling how that works.
Questbridge isn’t an outside scholarship per se so I don’t want anyone confused. It is an outside agency that names ‘winners’ aka Finalists an honor to list. These are not outside scholarships they are just extra access to partner colleges that give comprehensive need aid.
Knowing about tax ability is important but I hope side discussion doesn’t bog the thread down.
If an outside scholarship says you “must have need” and the student has already executed on a solid merit aid/financial safety school strategy, I’d go ahead and apply and see what happens (unless family income is ridiculous – like 300k+ with one child. Then you’re just not going to win no matter what.) Some scholarships are more lenient than others. Elks and JKCF just won’t tolerate upper middle class or high income applicants. Some others may, though; Burger King prioritizes work experience for the top award, and many subject-based (women in tech) scholarships are – beyond the initial application requirements (ie be a woman in tech) strictly merit. The problem with these is that they tend to be small and non-renewable. But, still, potential book money.
The JKCF College Scholarship is relatively new (2 years); the foundation ran the competition for their own Young Scholars for years, but it was only recently opened for public applications (to allow students who wouldn’t have known about the Young Scholars program in middle school to apply). This year they chose 50 College Scholars from an outside pool of applicants (I was one of them), and 44 came from the Young Scholars pipeline. The good thing about this scholarship is, if you fit into the application requirements to begin with – ie make less than 95k a year gross, have a GPA above 3.5, and have standardized test scores on the SAT or ACT in the top 15% – then you have a decent shot. The applicant pool is relatively small compared to most national programs (this year ~1800 “qualified” students applied), and my impression is that they don’t weight community service or extracurricular activities very heavily (since lower income students are less likely to have the chance to be engaged in them). Likewise, financial situation and other family hardships (divorce, immigration, etc) seem to be weighted very heavily. Much like with Gates, you also have to write a mini-thesis (thousands and thousands of words) to apply to JKCF, so that weeds out a ton of students; you’ll have a decent shot if you’re a good writer.
Tl;dr for JKCF – if you fit within those three requirements, consider applying. My family’s AGI is more than double the scholar average, but it still worked out.
It’s also worth mentioning that JKCF disproportionately selects for Southern students (~53% of the Scholar pool).
for the Elks scholarship, under “specific nature of work,” do I put my job title or do I describe the tasks I preformed.
what the
Do you actually use all that scholarship money? Or do all these institutions just give you enough scholarship money to attend your college for free?
Huh, isn’t attending college for free including living expense ‘using’ it? She said earlier that some of the funds exceeded COA so she was able to defer a portion toward grad school, and her college also reduced a portion of the aid as her expenses were fully covered.
@olems515 I believe I did both. Put a semicolon/comma between the job title and description.
@Archlion , @BrownParent is correct. I didn’t receive any of the money from my last-dollar scholarship (JKCF), and deferred Coke and GE-Reagan to grad school. My school took away my need-based aid and cut down some merit awards (for this year, at least) so everything would fit within the COA.
@CourtneyThurston what site did you use?