Collecting Resources on Paying for College

cpwill said:

All,

So, I'm starting up an effort to help kids in my local community figure out how to pay for college without going massively into debt. Governing assumptions for most of these kids is that parents can help out in the range of "Some" to "None".

I used ROTC, which paid for most of my college, got some scholarships for some of the rest, and my parents helped with a semester. But that was... several years ago. Gosh, almost two decades.

I was wondering if any of ya'll were aware of, or had any, resources that collected information on scholarships, grants, etc. I'm trying to build a kind of "Big Book Of Things To Do", and looking to maximize places to point them to, and routes to set them on.

In addition, I'm going to have them look at opportunities to work for the college, work off college, etc., but I think that is pretty much college/university-specific. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Click to expand...

cpwill said:

I was wondering if any of ya'll were aware of, or had any, resources that collected information on scholarships, grants, etc.

Click to expand...

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• 100% tuition and required fees
• $750/year for book stipend
• $250/month stipend for ten months as a freshman; increases $50 per year
• Uniforms
• Midshipmen pay during summer training periods (normally 4 weeks)

• Forget the notion that as an undergrad, one needs to attend an elite school. Nobody need do so.
• If money's tight, apply to an elite school, but focus on in-state public colleges. Every state has at least one high quality university, and most have several.
• If the kid has a career path s/he's fairly certain about, s/he should research the firms offer those career paths, call them and ask at what colleges and universities in one's state -- particularly state rather than private schools -- they recruit undergrad. It's far easier to get, say, a job at JPL, Fermilab, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, Goldman, etc. if that organization has an active and strong recruiting program at the school from which one graduates.
• Don't undervalue community college (CC). The core classes one must take -- science, English composition, humanities, calculus (B.S. students rather than B.A. students, the latter needing only precalculus), etc. are the same no matter where one takes them. If one must take loans to finance one's degree, it serves one not to pay a four-year institution $1500/credit hour to learn the exact same content one can learn for $200/credit hour at a CC.
  • Deciding early that one will pursue the "community college first" approach has benefits besides the cost:
    • All the cost and angst of applying to four-year schools is avoided.
    • CCs generally have transfer scholarship opportunities that are not available to "straight from HS" entrants to a 4-year school, plus one often is still eligible for the school's other scholarship opportunities.
    • So-so high school students who "buckle down" and become excellent students at a CC are sure to gain admission to the state school they want to attend and they'll often earn full scholarships. Even not being an excellent CC student, one's ability to go to the state's top 4-year schools becomes all but assured because community colleges have partnership programs whereby the state's 4-year schools guarantee admission to B-or-better graduates from its partner community colleges.
• Take AP classes in HS and earn a 3 or higher on the class' AP exam. That will get one college credits for free and helps reduce one's overall college costs. For instance, all my kids entered college with at least 15 credit hours toward their college degrees. My kids mostly used the credits not to shorten their time in college, but to increase the quantity of classes they could take.
• When at a 4-year school, take as many credit hours per semester as one can, provided one also can earn As in at least 3/4ths of those classes and Bs in the rest. The skills that make that possible are time management/prioritization and study skills. If 15 credits is the most one can handle in a semester, then don't try taking 16+. If one can, however, it's faster, thus cheaper, to take more credits per semester, but prospective employers care about one's GPA, so that's more important than is getting out sooner.