<p>Current high school junior, but thinking ahead to finances next year - here’s my situation: I have what you could say an outside scholarship that is going to pay basically 31k a year (minus a 2k deductible, so 29k a year) towards any universities tuition in the country. This number will go up with tuition costs, so it evens out over the years. Needless to say, with that kind of scholarship, I probably won’t get too much aid from very many places, and if I do get it, it will be merit based. We are most likely going to have to take out loans, not for tuition, but room and board. Room and board varies but averages out to be like 10k a year for the schools I want to go to. I am a North Carolina resident, but with the tuition scholarship, I really want to explore other parts of the country and not be bound by OOS tuition. I want to major in Meteorology, and there are 2 schools in north Carolina that I would be willing to go to that offers it, which are NC State and UNC-Asheville. Neither of these schools are necessarily amazing in the Meteorology department, So I want to go elsewhere for my studies. Is it going to make sense to go out of state and have to deal with a lot more transportation expenses as well as the room and board to go to a more prestigious school, or should I just stay at home (NC State is about 45 minutes from my house) and not have to deal with the extra costs of flying and driving with the ever-increasing cost of gas. Or in the long run will these extra expenses not really matter?</p>
<p>States that have schools I would want to go to: Pennsylvania (Penn State), Oklahoma (OU), Kansas (KU), Florida (Miami), Mississippi (Mississippi State)</p>
<p>I mean i’ll probably have to find an on campus job to pay for some of that I’m sure, but does the probably extra thousand dollars a year in logistics seem worth it to go to say, the 45th best school in the country vs. the 101st?</p>
<p>29k is a fantastic amount of money that will pay for everything at many colleges. For example, MSU’s Cost of Attendance, which includes Tuition & Fees, Room & Board, Books & Supplies, Personal & Transportation, is $28,840.</p>
<p>If the only difference are the transportation costs, it would be really worth looking into these other programs if they are better in your field. You basically need transportation to school in fall, to/from home at winter break, and home for summer. </p>
<p>Did you see KUs (automatic) scholarships for OOS students for academic merit? You may qualify for these. I don’t know if these could be on top of your other scholarships. Even w/o these your other scholarships will cover much of KU OOS costs (~$31K/year + personal expenses + transportation).</p>
I get the impression from the original post that the scholarship is up to $29k and will only pay toward tuition expenses, not other expenses.</p>
<p>To the OP, some public schools, the tuition is the cheapest part of the COA. Does the scholarship go toward mandatory fees as well? I know that OU for instance, the per credit fees are higher than the instate tuition fees.</p>
<p>As someone else said, a lot of school scholarships are geared toward tuition waivers. As you already have tuition covered, you need to check the individual schools yo are interested in to see what they might offer in the way of scholarships that are not tuition waivers. Are you low income? If you qualify for need based aid then grants such as the Pell can be used toward other expenses such as room and board. They become taxable income when used to pay for non qualified expenses such as room and board, but still very beneficial.</p>