Scholarships for current college students?

[mamakelly]

My oldest sons girlfriend is having some major financial issues. Long story short, she was an athlete with a full ride and got injured and lost her scholarship during her freshman year. She's been trying to get reclassified as an in-state student, as her mother (single mom), moved here to our state. She's been getting the runaround for the past two years about being reclassified, even though she has every bit of documentation they keep asking for. Anyways she's almost at the point where she's going to have to drop out and work until the school will reclassify her as an in-state student. I was trying to help her see if we can find any scholarships that hasn't closed yet, for the 2017 2018 school year. Any suggestions?

[Lori D.]

Has she already applied for admission and been accepted? She won't be able to go through the scholarship process unless she is an admitted student, so that is the first hurdle.

 

She would be a transfer student, moving from one school to a new school, and would only be eligible for transfer student scholarships, as she is no longer a freshman. The scholarship application process would likely be closed or almost closed by this time -- although the thing to do is to get on the school's website and find the scholarships page and find what the deadlines are for applying. In our state, the colleges have all-online application processes where you enter all your information once, including the essay answers to several questions, and then you click on each of the scholarships you are eligible for, which then applies for those scholarships at one time. Again, my experience here has been that some scholarships have an end of April deadline, some are mid-May, and some are end of May.

 

Just an FYI: most transfer scholarships are small, and most are 1-year/1-time awards, so, not renewable for future years. :(

 

As far as in-state/out-of-state -- that depends on the state and the the college. Some states require different amounts of time of living in the state to be classified as in-state -- 1 year, 1.5 years, 2 years. Usually having a parent living in the state for 2 or more years, and the student getting the new state's driver's license and having filed a state tax return state for that state are enough documents for in-state classification, but it sounds like she is already doing all of that.

 

One other thing she might consider, if finances are tight, is to NOT attend the college this year, but instead spend this next year studying and CLEP-testing for as many of the gen. ed. courses she will need at the new college (that the new college will accept). OR, apply at the local community college (if it is cheaper and the credits will transfer to a 4-year university) and knock out as many classes as will transfer for her chosen degree field. If she maintains a high GPA, that will boost her chances the following year for good transfer scholarship money AND she would be eligible for Phi Theta Kappa (the community college honors society), which often offers small transfer scholarships to members.

 

Good luck! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Lori D.

[JanetC]

Has the school given a reason in writing why in-state has been denied? If not, ask for that.

 

You might also have the mom call her state representative's constituent services person and ask for assistance.