Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Scholarship testing

G'day

I went to a presentation about scholarships last night and have come away with a few questions. Has anyone used a scholarship tutoring/preparation service? To what end? What did your student gain? There seems to be so very many money making schemes around. Is this another one? jojo

My kids aren't old enough yet, so I'm not sure. I just thought I'd reply to bump your post up again. Maybe someone else will have an answer for you.

Scholarship testing for college?
Like paying for a college consultant? It's gotten alot harder to get scholarships for college, as the money has dried up.

I would suggest instead that parents spend some time on the College Confidential website financial aid & scholarship forum:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/

The parents on the forum have tons of experience with these issues. A day or so spent perusing those threads (even some of the older ones) is a tremendous education in the realities of funding a college education.

I do not agree that the "money has dried up" for college scholarships. But you have to be savvy about how to go after it. There are several strategies; one we used very effectively for my oldest D (junior in college at a private LAC) was applying to schools that give good merit money where your kid is near the top of the applicant pool. She also gained some smaller amounts of scholarship money from organizations she had been active in (eg, scouts).

You still might decide to use a scholarship service after spending the time online, but you can do this yourself, too.

Jojo is in australia and I am guessing she means scholarships for private secondary schools. I tried one and my son hated hated it and gave up. He did end up getting a scholarship. I imagine if you have the right sort of parent pleasing child :-) you could get some benefit in terms of test taking, essay skills etc.

When I said "the scholarship money has dried up,"
Yes, there is money out there but the merit-based tends to be smaller and harder to get. If you go to a less prestigious, less well-known school, you could snag a full-ride, which can be great. many of the "big name" schools are not offering that much merit-based aid. Much of their aid is in the form of loans.
My alma mater, Northwestern U in IL, is about $54,000 a year, which is alot. The Ivies, Stanford, etc. are the same. My friend's son is going to New York Medical College, a good (not great) private med school. That is running $75,000 a year. Ouch.

Not sure if you have statistics showing the change in merit based aid over time, would be interested if you have some. But you can get a great education at a school below that top tier if you haven't been saving enough/earning enough to pay for those top schools. Believe me, it isn't the end of the world for our kids to go to a top 60 school vs. a top 20 school. My older D has very good merit aid to a top 50 school; her more gifted younger sister will likely go to a slightly better school with a similar amount of merit aid (or a similar school with better aid :)). We are visiting for second one now, and looking carefully at the merit aid options for all the schools. Believe me, no school where my kid is at the top of the stats pool will get an application from her if they don't offer good merit aid -- we took an LAC off the list just recently because they dropped merit aid for all students.

I don't call it "aid" if it is a loan, by the way. I know the colleges do, but that is obviously not an accurate term.

I did see that the original poster was from Australia, but thought the person who resurrected the thread was not.

Ivys do not give merit based scholarship. All financial aids are based on the need (calculated based on income and asset).

The schools that are a bit lower than Ivys do give some merit based scholarship. But they are difficult to get. My older daughter got in JHU, Duke, North Western, U of Chicago and Washington U in St. Luis. She tried very hard, writing those extra essays for merit based scholarship, etc. In the end, none of them gave her any money.

Where I live there are few academic select highschools. There is one public academic select school nearby (which has a sound reputation for catering for the needs of G&T kids) and a number of public schools that have G&T programs (one of which we're in the zone for).

To be eligible for entry into the gifted school or a gifted program, you need to sit a selection test (in year 6 which is around 11 years of age for entry into highschool in year 8 around 13 years of age). There are more private options, but they require your child to sit a highly competitive scholarship test.

The positions in the gifted programs and scholarships are highly sought after. As a result, many scholarship preparation and selection test tutoring services have popped up.

While I suspect that the preparation services are money making ventures, I guess I'm wondering whether it's worth pursuing.

Thoughts? jojo

Chenchuan, I am not surprised that merit aid is tough to get at JHU, Duke, etc. ... and as I strongly believe, your kid does NOT need to go to a top 20 school (as all of those pretty much are) to get a good education. Go down to number 50 on the LAC list, and you can find some nifty merit scholarships and a very good education. Sometimes the whole "top school" fixture that so many parents have reminds me of demand for designer jeans.

Regarding the scholarship testing, I guess that sounds like SAT Prep here in the US, but at a younger age. If I thought my kid had a chance at one of those schools, I would certainly consider some kind of prep. Here in the US you can get books that help you "self prep" for a test like the SAT; if you have a good relationship with your kid, you could probably do that. But I am not so sure you have that option, and a service might be a good idea. Can you ask parents of older kids you know if they used the services (esp. ones at the school)? Do you know anyone who works at the G/T school (they might have an opinion on different services)?

If you have to pick "blindly", I would probably meet with a few to see who has been around doing it for a while, what approach they use, cost, time commitment, what results they claim they can get. Ask them for a few references of parents whose kids DID get into the program, and kids who DIDN'T.