Jonathan: [00:00:00] There’s no more powerful word in the whole paying for college world than scholarship how many TV shows and movie plots revolve around a student winning a scholarship or losing one and suddenly being at risk of having to leave school? I’m thinking about one, it came out about 10 years ago it was called The House, and Amy Poehler and Will Ferrell play middle class suburban parents who turn their house into an illegal casino to pay for their daughter’s college.

And they have to do this because the $50,000 scholarship that she was counting on, the one that they were getting from the town that was going to pay for everything, was [00:01:00] yanked away at the last minute. Now, I like this example because it really illustrates how a lot of people, most people I think, think about scholarships.

People see the high college price tags on the news, or they hear stories about student debt, and they’re worried about how they are going to pay for college, and scholarships really become, I think, what a lot of parents pin their hopes on. Throughout my time at MEFA, I’ve talked to a lot of parents of young children, parents who are for the first time really beginning to tackle this question of, “How am I gonna pay for college?”

And almost always, the conversation includes some variation of maybe they’ll get a scholarship.” And when they say that, I know that they likely mean this scholarship of pop culture legend, the one from the town, or from the wealthy philanthropist, or from [00:02:00] the national corporation that’s going to swoop in and pay for everything.

But those kinds of scholarships are very rare. Most scholarships from outside organizations are relatively modest in their amount, and many of the large scholarship awards actually come from the colleges themselves. And so this misunderstanding can mean that students might miss the opportunities that could really help them.

The fact is that scholarships can and should be a part of the college financing strategy. You should be looking for scholarships. You should be applying for scholarships. The key is knowing where to find them, how to position yourself for success, and what expectations to have along the way. Now I’m joined by my friend Shannon Vasconcelos of Bright Horizons College Coach and a former MEFA ambassador, and she is going to help us understand how [00:03:00] scholarships really work, where to find them, and importantly, how students can maximize their scholarship potential regardless of their circumstances, and much more.

So much more, in fact, that this will be part one- of a two-part series. So let’s get started and meet our guest

Shannon: I’m Shannon Vasconcelos. I’m senior director of the education team at Bright Horizons College Coach, and you may have heard of Bright Horizons because of the childcare centers that they run all over the country.

College Coach is a lesser-known division of Bright Horizons, and what we do is help families navigate the entire education journey. So we work with families, with parents of young kids about saving for college, and then when they get into high school academic, [00:04:00] extracurricular planning, then through the whole college search, application process, and of course how to pay for it, so financial aid, scholarships, student loans, all of that good stuff.

We’ve also recently added career planning services to our repertoire as well. So we’re really helping families, from birth to the launch of their young adult children. And we do that, families come to us through our private consulting services, and then we also do employer services. So we are an employer-sponsored benefit for many folks who get our services absolutely for free through their employer.

So that’s generally what we do at Bright Horizons College Coach. Before coming to Bright Horizons, I worked as a financial aid officer.

Jonathan: And I guess that’s not a surprise then because so many of folks from Bright Horizons College Coach also work with MEFA as MEFA ambassadors too, like yourself- That’s right

and like some other folks who’ve been on this show before. And I was [00:05:00] lucky enough to be on your show last week. I don’t know if you want to tell the folks about the, the podcast that y- you do.

Shannon: Yeah, so Bright Horizons College Coach has a podcast called Getting In, a College Coach Conversation, where we talk about, again, the same sorts of things, the college admissions process, the college finance process.

And yeah, Jonathan was on our show last week talking about 529 college savings plans, and he was really awesome, so you all- … should tune in and listen to that episode.

Jonathan: Oh, thank you. And as I pointed out, college savings is my favorite thing to talk about because it’s all good. Yes. But what we’re gonna talk about today and what you’re gonna talk about on this show today is what everybody really wants to hear about- Yeah

right? Which is scholarships. Yes. Why don’t we start really basically and just tell everybody what are scholarships?

Shannon: Yeah, so scholarships are free money to help families pay for college. That’s the long and short of it. It’s money that does not have to be paid [00:06:00] back the way you have to pay back a student loan.

It’s straight up un- under the category of what we call gift aid in the sort of financial aid, college finance world. Under gift aid, I would say there’s two- Two different types of gift aid, scholarships and grants, and here’s where things sometimes get a little bit muddy. Usually when you hear the word grant, it is referring to free money that is need-based.

You apply for need-based financial aid, and you are awarded a grant. Usually when you hear the word scholarship, it is referring to merit-based money. You don’t have to have financial need to qualify for a scholarship usually. I think the waters have gotten muddied a bit in sort of recent years. There are some schools that have decided to call their need-based grants need-based scholarships, and that’s where things can get a little bit confusing, but today we are [00:07:00] focusing on that sort of merit-based scholarship money.

Jonathan: Yeah, and you just touched upon something really important, and that is where do scholarships actually come from?

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah, they can come from a few different sources. One is the state’s state government. Folks may have heard of some of the big state scholarship programs that are out there.

If you live in Florida, it’s the Bright Futures Scholarship, Georgia the HOPE Scholarship. Here in Massachusetts we have the John and Abigail Adams sort of merit-based scholarship program based on MCAS standardized test scores. So states can be a source of scholarship funding. They’re… you can usually use state scholarships only at the public universities in that state.

That is usually the case. So states are one source. The colleges themselves are another source. That is you want to go to [00:08:00] the University of Shannon here I may award you a $5,000 scholarship to attend the University of Shannon. It can only be used at my university, the university that has offered the scholarship.

So colleges award scholarship funding, and then lots and lots of private organizations offer scholarship funding. It can be from, the big ones folks may have heard of like the Coca-Cola Foundation or the Gates Foundation award big scholarships, all the way down to very local organizations, the local Elks lodge or maybe the supermarket in your town might offer a scholarship.

So those, we call them often private scholarships, outside scholarships. They have different names, but it’s basically a scholarship from an outside organization you can take to any college you want to.

Jonathan: And we have private scholarships or outside scholarships as you call them from private organizations state scholarships, and then scholarships from colleges and universities.

Of these three- Which is likeliest [00:09:00] to give the biggest amount to a student?

Shannon: This is often surprising to folks, but the most lucrative source of scholarships funding is really the colleges themselves. If we look at the recent most recent data that the college board gathers, they, If you’re a nerd about this stuff like Jonathan and I are.

They publish a great report annually called Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid, where they collect all sorts of data about this kind of stuff. But from the latest college board report, looking at the full sort of college aid puzzle, where is money coming from, 33% of it is coming from the institutions themselves.

State funding accounts for 8% of the puzzle. Private funding, and that also actually includes ins- employer-sponsored tuition assistance, only accounts for 6%. So certainly I wouldn’t pass up 8% or [00:10:00] 6% when we’re talking- … about the cost of college. Those are significant numbers. But 33% of the college aid puzzle is coming from the colleges themselves, so that’s really the most lucrative source of scholarship funding.

And, when you talk about how to maximize scholarships, I think most people envision, going online and applying for every private scholarship under the sun. But what I encourage folks to do is really focus more on the colleges themselves, the list of colleges you’re going to apply to.

That’s what’s really gonna maximize your scholarship funding.

Jonathan: All right. I just want to take a break from this conversation, as always, to remind you that if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about someone who you know who should hear what Shannon and I are talking about, please go ahead and forward them this episode.

And also, if you actually want to search for scholarships, check out mefa.org for tips on how to do that and [00:11:00] to find actual scholarship opportunities. You might also want to follow us on social media, where we post links to scholarships quite frequently. We are on Facebook at MEFA MA, on X at @mefatweets, and on Instagram at MEFA_MA.

Now back to the show.

So how would a student know whether or not a college grants merit scholarships?

Shannon: You can go to a college’s website, and they will often have a scholarships page that should tell you at least some of the information that you need to know. It will tell you if they have scholarships or not, or if they don’t have scholarships, they probably don’t have a scholarships page.

They probably have a financial aid page where they will tell you, “We only award need-based financial aid. We do not award merit scholarships.” That is the minority of schools. When we’re [00:12:00] looking at schools that don’t award scholarships, we are talking about the very most selective schools, like the Ivy League schools of, like Stanford and Georgetown, schools of sort of similar selectivity.

The most selective schools focus their funding solely on need-based financial aid and don’t award merit scholarships, but the vast majority of schools do award some type of merit scholarship funding.

Jonathan: And why would you say most colleges do award merit scholarships?

Shannon: The colleges award scholarships to recruit students.

That, that is the, the short answer to your question, Jonathan, and I think that I work very hard to encourage families to to look at things in that perspective. I think we, as, students and parents, we tend to think of scholarships as a reward. “Congratulations on a [00:13:00] job well done in high school.

Here’s this scholarship. We’d like to reward you with it.” But from the college’s perspective, the scholarship isn’t really a reward. It’s a recruitment tool. They’re trying to entice you to enroll in their university over others that you might have been accepted to, and that’s really why those most selective Ivy League colleges don’t award merit scholarships or…

because they really don’t have to. They don’t have to work hard to recruit students. The brand name alone is all the recruitment tool that they need. And it’s the colleges that are less well-known, that have to work a little bit harder to recruit students that tend to be the most generous wdataith scholarships.

Jonathan: So if we’re talking, as we are, how to maximize scholarships, right? And how to maximize merit aid in your college search, and so how can this all affect you as a family?

Shannon: Yeah, [00:14:00] and I would say one thing is don’t necessarily apply to all the same colleges that all of your friends are applying to. I think that, that is a sort of an indication that if your friends are like you they get a lot of applicants like you, think outside the box a little bit in terms of where you’re applying, where you might be a more unique student, where you might stand out a little more, be a little bit more above average. But to get into sort of the brass tacks of it, a great source is the colleges’ websites themselves.

Look on their website. They, again, they likely have a scholarships page that may provide some data to you. Sometimes they don’t provide very helpful data. Sometimes they’re very vague, “We have scholarships for,” “strong students academically,” and they don’t say more than that. But sometimes they’ll actually, and you’ll often see this at large state [00:15:00] universities, they may have just a grid, this grade point average or this SAT or ACT score equals this scholarship amount.

Those are the most helpful websites, and then you will straight up know exactly what kind of scholarship funding you’ll be eligible for

at that school. Also check out the net price calculators on the college websites. I’m sure, Jonathan, you’ve talked about these net price calculators before on your show. They are mandated to calculate need-based financial aid. Every college has to have one. It has to help folks understand need-based aid eligibility.

Colleges can go above and beyond with their net price calculator, and some of them, my favorite ones, will also calculate merit scholarship eligibility for you. If you find a calculator asking for data points like grade point average, class rank, test scores, things like that, they’re probably incorporating merit scholarships into that tool.

So that’s a great resource. Also, every [00:16:00] college, and this is particularly for those very data hungry people, and and I guess it’s not every college, but it’s most colleges report on their website their common data set. Oh, yeah. You just, Google any college with the words common data set.

University of Shannon common data set. It will give you lots of data about the school, including points like what percentage of students receive non-need-based aid. That’s what they call it in the common data set. That’s where they’re talking about generally merit scholarships. What does the average student look like at their school?

What are average GPAs, SAT scores, things like that. And so when you see what sort of the average student looks like at a school, you can say then how do I compare to this average student? Am I above or below average?” Understanding that the schools are going to want to recruit the students that again, stand out the most, are the most above average.

So that can give [00:17:00] you a sense of what your scholarship chances are at any given school. The more above average you are, the more likely you are to see scholarship funding. And if you don’t necessarily want to dig into the whole common data set the College Board’s website, BigFuture summarizes a lot of the sort of relevant data.

You can look up a lot of schools at once. So if you go to bigfuture.org, that’s a quick and easy place to see average GPAs, test scores, things like that for a lot of schools at once. Yeah. So those are the some good places to, to research, and I think the general point is apply to more what you might consider like safety schools.

At College Coach, we call them probable schools.

Schools where you are very probably going to get in, again, because you’re above average at those schools. Those are the schools that are likely want to… going to want to recruit you the most and will probably be most generous with scholarship funding.

Jonathan: Okay. And we can post a link to that [00:18:00] in the show notes so that people can check that out, although who wouldn’t want to go to the common data set? I don’t know.

Shannon: Only nerds like you and me, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Since you mentioned, averages and whatnot, I think a lot of people are- of the opinion that if you’re not a valedictorian or salutatorian or top of the class or near that, then you’re not gonna get any scholarships.

Not everybody, of course, can be above average. What would you say to students who are average students? Can they still get scholarships?

Shannon: Yes, you absolutely do not have to be a straight A student to win a scholarship. If you are that straight A student, if you only apply to, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, where everybody’s a straight A student, you…

Again, they don’t offer any scholarships at all, you’re not standing out there, even as a straight A student. But you could be more like a B student, and if you apply to some colleges where the average is, closer to a C student, you actually stand out. You as a B student are much more likely to be offered scholarship funding than that straight [00:19:00] A student who only applied to the most selective schools, where they’re not gonna stand out.

So again, it’s focusing on the list, focusing on the schools that may be more like safety schools for you. Sure, as a straight A student, there’s gonna be many more schools that fall into that kind of safety school category for you but even for a, more average student, there’s gonna be plenty of schools that are gonna fall into that safety school category for you.

So I would say just be expansive in your search. Don’t just look at the schools that you hear about on the news every day.

Again, the colleges that have to work a little harder to recruit students are going to be more likely to offer scholarships to more students. There are some schools out there that offer scholarships to 100% of the students that apply.

Again, they’re the schools that you probably haven’t heard of them. They have to work harder to recruit students. So yeah, so even if you’re an average student, [00:20:00] absolutely scholarships are still in the realm of possibility.

Jonathan: And when you find those colleges that, may offer you a scholarship, how do you actually get those scholarships at that college?

Do you have to apply specifically for them, or will just doing the application at the college be enough?

Shannon: Yeah, usually you don’t have to do anything. Yeah, just fill out the admissions application, and that will essentially serve as your scholarship application. The admissions office will pick out the students that they want to enroll the most and offer them scholarship funding.

That is the most often case the most common case, where you don’t really have to do anything extra. You just apply to the school, you’re automatically considered for scholarship. Occasionally, and I most often see it for the very highest level, like full presidential scholarship, occasionally there is a some sort of application process that you have to go through, a special scholarship application you have to fill out.

So make sure you’re checking the college websites. Any college you’re applying to, [00:21:00] check their websites to make sure you’re not missing anything like that. And what I’ve- Also seen I can say this is fairly common where there’s not any extra paperwork to fill out, it’s just your admissions application, but sometimes you have to apply by an earlier deadline.

I often see this at large state universities where you have to apply by a priority deadline or early action deadline if you want to be considered for scholarships. So again, just make sure you’re checking on the school’s website, see if there are any special deadline, and make sure if there is, you get your application in early enough that you’re considered.

Jonathan: Now, when we talk about financial aid offers from colleges and, hopefully you get some need-based aid, some merit-based aid, and people want to ask if they can get more than they were initially offered.

I usually think about that in terms of what didn’t they ask you about your finances, and what can you tell them to give them a more complete- Yes

picture, and that all refers to need-based aid. [00:22:00] But what about merit-based aid? Is that negotiable at all?

Shannon: It very often is, and families usually don’t realize this. This is always a surprising conversation I have with families, but when you think about it, it makes sense when you think of paying for college, like paying for other large purchases, like a house or a car, right?

You negotiate for those things. Why would you not negotiate your college tuition? So it is a possibility at many schools. There are some schools that don’t negotiate at all but it never hurts to ask. Sometimes families are afraid to go back to the school. They’re not going to rescind your admission.

They’re not going to take away money they already gave you because you asked for more. It’s never going to hurt you.

And it may help you. What I essentially recommend that folks do is send an email into the admissions office saying, “Thank you for accepting me. I’d [00:23:00] love to go to your school for such and such reasons, but this other school has offered me this larger scholarship amount that’s hard to turn down.

Is there anything else your school could offer, or are there any additional scholarships I could apply for at your school to make my attendance more feasible?” You just send in a pretty brief email like that to the admissions office, and you might be surprised at how often schools say, “Yes, here’s another 2,000, 5,000, $7,000 that we have available to offer you.”

Doesn’t happen all the time, but it absolutely does happen, and it never hurts to ask.

Jonathan: Now I’m picturing this being done in the spring after folks get their financial aid offers. But of course, there’s different ways to apply. And so this question I’ve actually gotten a few times from parents and students and I’ll ask you to explain early decision, but can you still get [00:24:00] scholarships if you apply early decision?

Jonathan: And so what is early decision, and what’s your-

Shannon: Yes … likelihood of being, yeah,

Yes, let’s start with what early decision. Early decision is an application process where you are telling the school, you’re signing an agreement on your application, “If you accept me through this early decision process, I will in fact attend your school.

I will withdraw any applications I have out there at any other schools, and I will attend your school if you accept me.” So you can only apply to one school early decision. And if they accept you, you’re telling them you’re going to go. Now, when you think about that in relation to scholarships and what we’ve talked about how it’s a recruitment tool, if you’ve already guaranteed this college that you will in fact enroll if they accept you, they don’t have to work very hard to recruit [00:25:00] you.

You told them already, “I’m in.”

So based on that sort of theoretically, you would think that scholarships are not particularly likely from through an early decision process. And I have heard of a few instances at a few specific schools where that is the case. However, from all my conversations with all of my colleagues who have worked with, at, hundreds of schools across the country most schools seem to be giving kind of equal consideration for scholarships through the early decision process as through a regular decision process where you’re not making a commitment upfront.

I like to have … One of my colleagues said that she had talked to her sort of boss in the admissions office at her school about, “Why are we offering these kids who apply early decision scholarships? They’re gonna come whether we offer them the scholarship or not.” And her boss essentially said something to the effect of, “Because if we didn’t, we would just be great big [00:26:00] jerks.”

It’s essentially it’s, being fair to students. So I think that scholarships at most schools are absolutely still on the table if you apply early decision. The one thing you can’t really do if you apply early decision is negotiate them.

Jonathan: I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah.

Shannon: Y- yeah.

So again, you’ve already told them, “You’re my first choice. You accept me, I’m coming.”

You then, “And I will withdraw all my other applications at other schools if you accept me.” You can’t then go back and say, “School XYZ offered me more in scholarships. Hey, show me the money.” They’re gonna say, “You were supposed to withdraw your application at school XYZ.”

That could be problematic. So you can’t negotiate scholarships, but they are likely still on the table if you apply early decision. But it, this is a whole other topic for another podcast. If your money is a primary motivator for you and you wanna be able to consider all the different offers at all the different schools, early decision is probably the not the best admissions process for you.[00:27:00]

Jonathan: I should have you back to do that, all about early decision, right?

Shannon: I’m in.

Jonathan: All right, let’s do it. Yeah. Something else that, that comes up too is, people sometimes don’t know whether or not they’re applying for everything for the four years or that they have to do this every year, right?

And that applies to- Yes … filing financial aid, it applies to any loan that they might get. They might think that they can borrow- … for four years at once, and my answer is always no, you do it year by year, right? But what about college scholarships? Are they typically awarded or, I know they’re awarded per year.

Well- I’ll ask you that. Are they typically awarded for one year or for all four years?

Shannon: Yes. I would say that most college merit scholarships are renewable-

…

Shannon: For all four years, but there’s usually some fine print to that.

Jonathan: Okay.

Shannon: We’d like to offer you this scholarship, $10,000 a year for the next four years, provided you maintain a certain grade point average, [00:28:00] maintain a certain credit load, like you have to be a full-time student.

You can’t drop below half-time, something like that. Maybe if it is a scholarship that’s, from your major department. Like maybe you have to stay in that. If you’re getting the economics scholarship, you might have to stay in the economics major . If you change majors, maybe you don’t get that scholarship.

Certainly, athletic scholarships is, fall under the sort of general category of merit in a different type of way, but maybe you have to keep playing your sport to keep getting that scholarship. So I would say usually renewable for all four years, but read the fine print about what the requirements are to keep the scholarship.

When I was working in a financial aid office, that was always the saddest situation when a student came in with a wonderful scholarship and then didn’t do very well that first semester, that first year, didn’t make the grades, and then lost that scholarship, costing their family [00:29:00] thousands and thousands of dollars.

You don’t want to be in that situation. Make sure you read that fine print and maintain whatever you need to maintain to keep that scholarship.

Jonathan: Now is the opposite true? Can you get more than you were initially offered in later years?

Shannon: Sometimes it is possible, but it’s not something that I would count on.

Again, remember the theory behind scholarships, they are a recruitment tool. Once you have enrolled in the college, they don’t really need to recruit you anymore. You’re there. They got you. There is not the tremendous incentive to increase a scholarship amount. Now sometimes there are additional scholarships you can receive as a continuing student.

It might be some sort of endowed scholarship where someone has donated money to the school, and they have set the restriction that it has to be for a sophomore, junior, [00:30:00] senior student. It’s not for a freshman. Or it might be some sort of, again, departmental scholarship where they want to see you prove yourself academically in that major before they offer you a scholarship.

So there are possibilities, and it’s something to look for as a continuing student, but it is definitely not something I would count on. And I certainly talk to families all the time that have that that have that game plan. You know- I’ll figure out how to get through the first year and then my kid will do really the first year and they’ll get more scholarships, and then I can afford this school. That is not a good game plan. Don’t enroll in a school that you can’t afford assuming that you will get more scholarships later. Again, it’s a possibility at some schools.

You might get a little more, but it’s absolutely not something to count on. You want to think about your four-year plan in advance. You only want to [00:31:00] enroll in a school that you can afford without any additional scholarships.

Jonathan: I’m gonna stop there, but there’s still much more to come from Shannon on part two, so be sure to stick around for our next episode. Until then, my name is Jonathan Hughes, and this has been the MEFA Podcast