Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Rising scholarship funds to rising college costs

Okay, it's idle curiosity at this point at I have two rising 6th graders. However, I cannot but marvel as the changing landscape. It is truly astonishing how tuition has more than quadruple at certain colleges over the last three decades. However, the astronomical rise in college costs has been endlessly debated already. What struck me today is actually the crazy rise in "scholarship" funds. In our district, the seniors received $150 million dollars in scholarship funds last year, which translates to over $20,000 per graduate. Obviously, many students did not receive any scholarships and some students receives hundreds of thousands in scholarship funding. In any case, $150 million is huge for just one school district. Obviously, a good portion of that funding is not awarded by specific colleges. However, even taking that into account, I cannot help but be struck with the thought that much of that "scholarship" would not be necessary or feasible were it not for the crazy price tags at even the typical college. What are your thoughts?

You are just now realizing this?

Ok -- where's the money ? The main scholarship sources I know of are
(1) National Merit
(2) full and partial scholarships awarded by colleges (sometimes to National Merit finalists)
(3) state-based scholarships, such as Georgia's Hope Scholarship.
(4) sports scholarships
(5) ROTC

If lots of students in your town are getting scholarships from sources other than these, I'd be interested to hear about them. It is cynical but not incorrect to observe that many merit scholarships and financial aid plans offered by colleges could also be described as price discrimination.

If my children get scholarships, great, but I know that the amount of merit scholarship money available to students at the most selective colleges is pretty meager.

Yeah - I am slow on the uptake!

I did know generally that scholarship funds have been rising. I just did not realized that it was so crazy high. I went to one of the top high schools in our state and our class did not get anywhere near that kind of scholarship amount per graduate.

Hmmm-- well, my question is first and foremost-- what exactly does that figure REALLY represent?



My guess is that it represents all the $$ that was OFFERED to students as grants/scholarships/tuition discounting/monetary awards. In other words, everything but loans or family contribution, or "unmet need."

From ALL schools, including those that the student opted not to attend.

If you look at that figure for even a single student like my DD (who isn't an extreme example by any means, since she applied to so few schools, and we have apparently got about "zero" family financial need)-- that figure is easily into the six-figure range.

If you look at the dollar amount that she is actually going to use, however, it's much more modest, but still more than most students going ANYWHERE are offered-- ~50K.

My DD's class was awarded several hundred thousand. There were 280 of them, and maybe 2/3rds of them are actually going to colleges where such awards would be made. Now, I know for a fact that some of the students in that class who are middle-class were offered very little in the way of merit aid, in spite of being, well-- pretty darned meritorious, IMO. These are kids that any TigerParent would be pleased by, basically-- and they were most certainly not offered tons of $$-- other than at private colleges, where the formula seems to roughly be that the award amount for super-rock-star academics is A = d(T), where T is the base tuition rate, and d is any value between 0.05 and 0.40, depending upon the institution.

Now, you can see that A is a pretty large value as X approaches infinity, no matter what value d possesses (in light of the stated range). Yes, I'm being cheeky, but you get the idea.

So that's why I'm saying that I strongly suspect that the figure mentioned is rolling together all of the $ that seniors were OFFERED. Big difference. Kids apply to plenty of "reach" institutions that there is NO way that they can actually afford, and they often hope that the institution will kick in a large award as a pleasant surprise. Not-so-much, though.

For example, here-- UVA (fine school, right?) has out-of-state tuition at about 40K right now. Average award based on non-need-based MERIT? 10K. Now, realize that the 40K figure is only TUITION-- cost of 1yr is actually estimated at 53K for an out-of-state student.

That's pretty typical, in our (recent) experience.

Other scholarship funds may include those which families contribute to, sometimes unknowingly, such as team membership fees, tickets to homecoming dance, admission to various school events and activities (concerts, plays, honors night dinner), and club fundraisers... all of which may subsidize local commemorative scholarships, named scholarships, and foundation scholarships.

In the broadest sense, all financial aid (whether merit or need-based) can be considered scholarships, including loans.

That's a good question. Unfortunately, they did not provide a breakdown or even all the sources. The ones that you listed were certainly the obvious ones that came to my mind as well. I do know that a ton of kids in our district received awards from Scholastic Arts and Writing. There are also kids who got scholarships through their parents' employers, which can be significant if they worked for some of the private universities. I believe that there are also many small awards like the $1000 awards from Carson Scholars Fund as well as more local community based awards.

Exactly-- and those awards are "real" enough-- but I don't think that is how you get up to a figure like that reported million-plus value-- unless you're in a HUGE urban district. I'll be honest here: my DD is entering college next fall, and even in a pretty high-performing district, I can't believe a figure like 20K per student.

Not unless ALL of them are attending private colleges or on athletic scholarships at public ones, which also seems hard to believe.

I know plenty of kids in that MG tier, who are academic performers (that is, they are "good" but not "extraordinary" students)-- and they have been awarded a big fat NOTHING at public institutions, and a big fat 20-30% tuition "discount" at private ones-- which sounds awesome as it's about a 20K award in some instances-- until you think about the fact that it still leaves another 30-40K annually that has to be paid for.

That means that those awards might be real, but they still don't do ANYTHING like making the college affordable.

Even one or two Questbridge scholars, though, can really amp the number-- those are often tier one/elite schools with pricetags to match, and those are low-income FULL RIDE scholarships based on merit. So those awards really are 250K or more. DD knows 2 Questbridge scholars-- and we also know which institutions they are at. One of those awards is worth an estimated 265K, and the other is worth 280K.

Those are the ONLY merit scholarships like that of which I am aware, and as noted, they aren't even available to anyone whose household income qualifies as "middle class."

Yes, I am sure that the district is including all offered scholarships, some of which obviously could not be used if the graduate chooses not to attend the scholarship source.

On the other hand, several hundred thousands in a class of 280 ($1,000 to $2,000 per graduate) is a bit lower than I would have expected but as you pointed out the demographics could be a contributing factor.

On further reflection, I do know that the local high school makes a lot of effort in helping all kids, not just top students, apply for scholarships from all possible sources.

That reminds me that our middle school PTA apparently uses some of the funds that it raises to award small scholarships to deserving alums.

I would be shocked if the district included loans as scholarships. Our district is not perfect, but I can't imagine that they would do something quite so slimy.