I wonder if there is a listing somewhere of “good” (by some measure) outside scholarships available to students without financial need. We’ve been through the entire VSAC listing of Vermont-based scholarships, and there is nothing applicable.
DS is a junior in HS, has a 36 ACT, likely NMSF, currently ranked 2nd in his class of ~250 (GPA is weird at our school, but he has all As from Freshman year on, all honors/AP where applicable). He is also Junior class president, was one of his HS’s 2 HOBY reps, very involved in Drama club (including many lead roles – this is what takes up most of his time as it is 8-10 hours per week most of the year), and participates in an after-school chorus. He scored in the top 10 in a couple of statewide math contests, earning him a position on the Vermont ARML team, and a scholarship to the Governor’s Institute of Vermont for Mathematics. He’s in National Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society. He has not been employed other than a couple of short term summer camp positions, or done significant community service outside NHS (which has been fairly minimal). He’s planning on studying Computer Science.
Anything he should be looking at that he would have a reasonable shot at? I’m mainly thinking of something he could use wherever he ends up, but if you can think of schools offering strong CS programs that would likely offer him significant institutional scholarships, that would be nice too (I’ve seen the list of guaranteed scholarships – looking here more for things he could apply for or be automatically considered for that aren’t guaranteed but that he’d be in range for). We will be full-pay at all but the most generous schools, who it appears would give a bit of grant aid. We “can” afford this but would obviously like to explore scholarship opportunities where possible.
@CourtneyThurston could you please tell this poster if there are any big scholarships that don’t consider financial need?
And maybe some suggestions about CS too?
@mathmomvt the very best scholarships come directly from the colleges that admit your kiddo. Is there any chance he plans to apply anywhere with guaranteed merit aid, or a good shot at getting merit aid?
Google competitive merit scholarship yolasite, and you should get a link to a thread created several years ago. It has not been updated for some time, so not all of the scholarships still exist.
Here is the 2017 updated info that hasn’t been updated on that yolasite link. Frankly…the yolasite is so outdated, I would not bother with it. Many of those scholarships have been reduced, changed, or eliminated.
He is applying to Pitt and Northeastern, which will probably give him substantial merit. Waterloo, if they accept him, will also give him a chunk of guaranteed merit and probably a bit more, and he can pay the Canadian citizen price, so it will be quite affordable (though it’s very competitive to get in for CS).
Mostly just wondering what he might be eligible for in outside scholarship opportunities in case he gets into one of his mega-reaches (MIT, Stanford, etc.) that don’t give merit aid. I’m not looking for financial safeties at this point, just opportunities he should be aware of.
I think either the American Legion or Elks scholarship doesn’t have a need component, but not sure. The Pepsi bottling pant near us had a scholarship, and I think those are regional. My father’s fraternity gave a grant to any child or grandchild of the original member just for applying (and our family has received 8 of those, I think -much more than my father ever paid in dues).
There is always Miss America. How does he feel about beauty pageants?
We did know about Coke and I don’t think he’s really in range for that. All this is as we expected, just making sure he didn’t miss out on any opportunities he should have known about.
I second the recommendation to contact Courtney Thurston.
My DD is a STEM major and has received over $62K in private scholarships ranging from $500 to $5K over the past 4 years of college. How did we find them?? The hard way by just doing a lot of searches on STEM websites like “Engineering Girl” etc and any other website we came across. Some scholarships we found out about through industry websites like SAE, SME, ASME. Others we found out about on her major’s newsletter which goes out to students which mentioned scholarships by Akins, Palatinir, Shell, Ford etc. Her college also had special scholarships given out by other organizations or companies which her college administered which my DD also received. We also discovered that some companies used scholarships as recruitment tools so she applied to those and received them (Honda, Exxon etc.). I also trolled the engineering departments at other colleges like MIT and found scholarships listed there. Local scholarships were best Every time I thought I found all available scholarships, new ones would pop up so don’t stop researching.
Scholarships were not limited to just money for school but also for attending STEM conferences so don’t forget to look for those too. My DD had her way to the Society of Women Engineers paid for by BlackRock. Amazon paid for her to attend the Tapia CS Conference.
My DD and I developed a system which made applying for the scholarships much easier and less time-consuming. She used Google Docs to create folders and had an essay bank where she could cut and paste her essays together to answer any new prompts. She had two types of resumes, a one page typical one used for job hunting and then a longer 3 page resume that she used for scholarships if they allowed a longer resume to be submitted. My DD kept it constantly updated.
Those drama kids…