<p>I am mining this knowledgable group of parents for tips on how best to approach scholarship applications. Are the BIG national scholarships (Coca Cola, Gates) worth pursuing? </p>
<p>D is a junior w/ 4.0. Will have taken nine AP Classes by graduation and has taken the SAT once w/ 2160. (She is re-taking it again in June). She has been honored by United Way for her community service, but has done nothing beyond the county. Her ECs are limited to Chess Club, NHS (holds VP office), Key Club and tennis. </p>
<p>Since she took so many honors and accelerated courses earlier, she has had time to take three years of Drafting with CAD Design and two years of Office Certification classes in addition to her pre-recs for college.</p>
<p>She’s not looking to go somewhere grand, just a respectable school because she has a specific major program in mind, Institute of Design at Stanford. However, that will not occur right after graduating from college. </p>
<p>She’s white, not a college-level athlete and from a middle class family with little promise financial aid besides loans. </p>
<p>Should she just apply to smaller universities and try to get merit aid or should she do something this summer that might make her chances higher?</p>
<p>Looking forward to your opinions and advice…</p>
<p>I suggest you also post your query on the FA and Scholarships forums
:
[Financial</a> Aid & Scholarships - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/]Financial”>Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>Did your D take the PSAT? Did her score meet or exceed the minimum score for your state that is required in order to advance to National Merit Semi Finalist status?
If so, then get thee to this forum asap:
[National</a> Merit Scholarships - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/]National”>National Merit Scholarships - College Confidential Forums)</p>
<p>If you dont know if your D qualifies, then you can check out this years cutoff scores by state on the first thread in the National Merit page.</p>
<p>You will get GREAT advice from knowledgeable parents about Colleges that offer merit aid and FA and the Do’s and Dont’s re: FA on those 2 forums. Good Luck.</p>
<p>sandy…Congrats to your D on having a great HS record!! For those of us in the “middle-class bubble” with high-stat kids, merit aid is far and away your best opportunity for an affordable undergrad education for your D. Her GPA and SAT score will already qualify her for some full-tuition and a few full-ride scholarships, listed in the thread linked here.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-12.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-12.html</a></p>
<p>Many here on CC refer to these schools as “lower tier” which I personally think does a great disservice to these schools and leads to many students bypassing an opportunity to get a great undergrad education with greatly reduced or possibly no debt. It’s up to your family to decide if any of these schools are suitable to your D’s needs.</p>
<p>Regarding the large private scholarships like Coca-Cola, etc. I would certainly tell you that they’re worth pursuing, but regardless of your D’s stats I would never “count” on one of those coming through to pay for college. If your D wants to apply to schools (reach or otherwise) where those scholarships would be necessary to make it affordable she should feel free to do so, but with her eyes wide open and a sense of realism attached. As long as she has affordable safety schools (that she would be happy attending) with sufficient merit scholarships or FA to fall back on she can shoot for the moon with the private scholarships.</p>
<p>As menloparkmom says, if her PSAT score is high enough she may qualify for National Merit scholarships, which would broaden her list of affordable schools. Here’s a quick link to the state cutoff scores for the last several years. </p>
<p>[PSAT-</a> National Merit Scholarships and Semifinalist State Cutoff Scores](<a href=“http://bigdogacb.hubpages.com/hub/National-Merit]PSAT-”>http://bigdogacb.hubpages.com/hub/National-Merit)</p>
<p>To be safe, take the highest score your state has on this list and add 2 or 3 points to it to allow for a possible upward spike in this year’s cutoff. If your D’s score is at or above that level, she will most likely be named a NM Semi-finalist in September of this year. If she’s close to the historical cutoffs for your state, unfortunately you’ll just have to be on pins and needles with many other parents until the cutoffs start to trickle out in mid to late August (via the CC crowd here 
) and actual school notifications in September. Check the NM threads menloparkmom linked if you think your D might qualify, as there’s a wealth of information there. Congrats again on your D’s success so far, and good luck in her college search!!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the good advice. D was accepted at two private universities that offered her 50% tuition scholarships. She felt she deserved better. 
She has decided on a state university that offered her 65% of total costs (yes, I was surprised a state school would offer that much). She’s been accepted to Honors Program and the Women in CS/ Math Program. This will allow her to continue within an enriched program and avoid the huge undergrad classes. I was really thinking a private university would be her best opportunity, so this is a good fit, but a different outcome than I expected.</p>
<p>Four years ago - my d got 50% merit at a private U, and I forget but more than 50% merit at a UC. I’m not quite middle class so she ended up going to UPenn who gave her about 90% need based but that’s not what you asked. We found the big scholarships pointless but someone must get money from them. What helped us a lot was a local scholarship that was renewable each year - actually she had to reapply each year but they gave her money every year for four years. It was fairly small in the big scheme of things but Penn applied it to her student contribution so she didn’t have to take out as many loans and didn’t have to stress as much about working over the summer - she did work, but she worked to live, not to pay tuition. The local scholarship was offered only to kids who graduated from HS in our county - see if your locality has something like that. Or other organizations you or she may be involved in. - But the merit aid at Rice and UC were both part of the application process. If she had gone to Rice she would have had to maintain a certain gpa but it was renewable for 4 years and she seriously considered attending. I think UC had a similar gpa requirement to renew the scholarship. I have a friend also whose daughter got a good deal of merit money at a UC.</p>