The outside scholarship will (usually) reduce the loan and work study portion of your financial aid package before it reduces the grant portion.
Macalester colleges has a good example with numbers on their web page:
http://www.macalester.edu/financialaid/policies/outsidescholarships/index.html
I wouldn’t worry about outside scholarships and their impact on FA right now. Doesn’t sound like your parents’ income would qualify you for much need based aid anyways.
If you apply to safety schools and rolling admission match schools where merit is guaranteed or possible, you should have a good idea early in 2017 how much of costs would be covered.
Outside scholarships could help pay for travel, books, maybe some room and board together with direct loan and summer earnings at full tuition schools.
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The outside scholarship will (usually) reduce the loan and work study portion of your financial aid package before it reduces the grant portion.
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Right. But this young man is looking to reduce the “parent contribution”, because he suspects that his parents won’t pay that amount.
@NikkuWadde Yes, it is counter-intuitive. And, it’s often upsetting to those who think it’s going to reduce what the family is supposed to pay. It only reduces if it’s so huge that it covers the entire “need based aid” and then the remaining can reduce EFC
For example:
$65k = school cost
$25k = family contribution
If you get a scholarship that is $50k, then you’ll reduce your family contribution by $10k…the first $40k will go towards the school aid.
Well at least I know @mom2collegekids. So what I should do is amass as much scholarship money as possible, so it goes above at least $50k? Whoo boy, that’s gonna be tough. And I know those big name scholarships like the Gates-Millenum, Cameron Impact, and Ron Brown are harder to get than getting into Harvard.
Check to make sure but I think Gates Millenium has been discontinued.
Gates has been discontinued.
Well darn
Gates required the applicant to be Pell-eligible…
It can be more complicated. The financial aid package may look like this:
$65k = school cost
$10k = student contribution (student loans and expected work earnings)
$25k = family contribution
At many schools, the first $10k of scholarship in this example would replace the student contribution, then replace grants, then finally replace family contribution. Examples:
$0 scholarship => $35k net price (= $10k student contribution + $25k family contribution)
$5k scholarship => $30k net price (= $5k student contribution + $25k family contribution)
$10k scholarship => $25k net price (= $25k family contribution)
$40k scholarship => $25k net price (= $25k family contribution)
$50k scholarship => $15k net price (= $15k family contribution)
OP,
COLLEGES offer the most readily available scholarships.
ONLY colleges will offer you or your sibs[ if they get their standardized test scores up] GUARANTEED Merit scholarships.
All the other scholarships are larger crap shoots than even the state Lotteries.
Apply to the colleges that listed on these websites that offer full tuition or full ride scholarships.
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/
so you will have AFFORDABLE options and know that you WILL be able to [afford to] go to college.
when you and your sibs get your FINAL standardized test scores[ minus the writing #'s] and your grades and cumulative GPA’s through Jr year, let us know- we can then have a better idea of which colleges to suggest you and they apply to .
@NikkuWadde Our children face similar constraints when they apply to college. Our expected parental contribution is high, but what we are willing and able to contribute towards our kids’ college expenses is a fraction of that amt. (They also don’t get sibling tuition breaks bc they are spread out, and there are twice as many kids as in your family.)
Our kids apply to schools on the lists in @menloparkmom’s post. They are top students, so they are competitive for high dollar merit scholarships. Top schools are only a pipe dream for our kids bc there is absolutely no way they can attend bc we can’t pay and we won’t take out loans.
One thing Imwould recommend before you spend a ton of time on outside scholarship apps is to investigate honors programs and honors colleges to see what they might offer. For example, our ds is part of a research honors program where students are taught how to write computer programs for research data, given UG research opportunities, required to give multiple research presentations, etc. It is a small group, only 40 students accepted per yr, on a large public university campus. All the students involved are top academic kids. It is a great peer group and excellent experience.
You can find ways to make affordable schools match your academic needs and interest. It takes a lot of time researching schools, but come next spring, you’ll have more affordable options that you really like. Far better position than to have a lot of great acceptances you can’t afford. (Our kids apply to schools with really competitive scholarships, but they know acceptance is a no w/o being awarded the scholarship.)
Yes, and those hard to win national scholarships probably all have a need component. So with your parents’ income you most likely won’t qualify.
Our junior year transcripts came out today. We are all in the top 10% of our class:
Me: 3.83 UW, 4.34 W, Rank: 63/712, ACT: 31 (taking the SAT in October)
Bro1: 3.97 UW, 4.57 W, Rank: 22/712, ACT: 28 (retaking this June)
Bro2: 4.00 UW, 4.66 W, Rank: 15/712, ACT: 33 (retaking this June)
Bro3: 4.00 UW, 4.70 W, Rank: 11/712, ACT: 33 (taking the SAT in October)
Slacker! 
Good luck in your search!!!
I’ll be more blunt than @HRSMom: That top 10% is stupidly over-weighted in college admissions due to the USNews criteria, but it is what it is. You need to stay in the top 70 in your class senior year for the best shot at merit aid.
“Yes, and those hard to win national scholarships probably all have a need component. So with your parents’ income you most likely won’t qualify.”
Coke doesn’t (pure merit), but pretty much everything else does. And Coke is “only” $20k.
Another note after fully reading through this thread:
As others have pointed out, please don’t do ROTC unless you actually want to be military. My school has a huge ROTC program… and those kids have no lives. They have to wake up super early for training, inspections, workouts, etc, and the ROTC kids who are actually awarded scholarships (not many!) are usually in hard STEM fields. It’s A LOT to balance, not to mention the commitment after college. You give up a lot of choice in your life by going the ROTC route. Only do it if you truly, personally, want to. It’s not a quick fix for scholarship money.
I hope you and all of your brothers and your parents have the talk about college money, preferably in front of a computer where you can go to college web sites and run their net price calculators. You and your brothers need to know the cost constraints so that you can make financially realistic application lists.
You are correct that your odds of winning Ron Brown are no better than getting into Harvard, and in general the winners have gotten into Harvard. Just an fyi, Ron Brown funds have a lot of rules attached, and cannot be used toward EFC, so once again if you are looking for money to cover your parent’s responsibility, RBS is another dead end…
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Our junior year transcripts came out today. We are all in the top 10% of our class:
Me: 3.83 UW, 4.34 W, Rank: 63/712, ACT: 31 (taking the SAT in October)
Bro1: 3.97 UW, 4.57 W, Rank: 22/712, ACT: 28 (retaking this June)
Bro2: 4.00 UW, 4.66 W, Rank: 15/712, ACT: 33 (retaking this June)
Bro3: 4.00 UW, 4.70 W, Rank: 11/712, ACT: 33 (taking the SAT in October)
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Are these the rankings that will go on GC transcripts/report?
If you and your ACT 28 brother can increase your test scores to match/exceed the others, I think you all need to lock-step your apps to a few tippy top schools that give super aid…HYPS and Vandy. If y’all could get into one, the super-aid no-loan aid they give could mean that your parents’ would be expected to pay little for all if each of you took a $5k per year student loan.