We’ve been surprised that the state universities are awarding merit scholarships that are just for one or two years. One university offered $3000 for one year, and another offered $4000 for two years.
Does anyone here know if universities like that usually offer another merit scholarship once the first one expires? Are students just out of luck by the time they’re sophomores, juniors, or seniors?
It is hard to generalize. There may be departmental scholarships after declaring major. Future merit scholarships would at least partly depend on the student’s performance in college. You should consider it as a one time deal to see if the school is really affordable. This kind of bait and switch practice in financial aid is not uncommon though as I have read some news articles about that,
I know of schools that offer housing scholarships for 1-2 years because living on campus can be more expensive. DU does that, many students go abroad for at least one term for junior year (but many go for the entire year), and then live off campus for years 3-4 at a much cheaper cost.
My daughter’s costs were highest for years 1 & 2 even though tuition rose $2k per year. The room and board at the school were very expensive while rents around the school were very reasonable for years 3-4. We also made the rookie mistake of buying most of her books at full price freshman year because I thought the edition/matching ISBN was important (it isn’t) and she did have several courses that required buying codes. Some of her scholarships did go up a tiny bit in the later year, but she didn’t get any new scholarships…
It is perfectly OK to ask about possible renewal of thses scholarships. Happykid’s scholarship letter every semester read “renewal pending funding” but each term the money magically appeared from somewhere.