Why no scholarships for transfer students?

[Hilltopmom]

We visited a state school last weekend with nice merit (good amount, renewable for 4 years) scholarships for freshman.

For transfers, one year only 1,000 scholarship.

 

Ds had been sort of thinking about starting locally & then transferring.

 

But yikes, basically no aid for transfers, so maybe that's not a good idea after all.

 

I know that's typical from talk here on the board, but it's a bummer.

[maize]

I'm guessing that scholarships are dangled for freshmen to entice them to pick school A over school B. A kid who is choosing to transfer to school A must already be motivated to go there.

[J-rap]

Can you check other schools?  Colleges seem to vary so much on this.  Our latest experience with transferring was great.  Our daughter applied at a college (for her freshman year), was offered a nice freshman merit scholarship there, but in the end chose another college.  After a year, she regretted her decision and decided to reapply at the other college as a transfer.  I was worried about how her scholarship offer would change as a transfer.  As it turned out, it was just as good. It didn't have the same name, but she was offered the same amount of money as a transfer.  She was lucky!

 

It's a private LAC, so maybe they are more flexible?  Or maybe they were recruiting transfers so offered more?  I don't know, but it's certainly worth checking into other colleges.

[MarkT]

You could probably knock enough credits for the first year (part-time along with your DE) and still apply as a Freshman. Be sure to find out what the maximum amount of credits you can have and still remain Freshman status.

 

Strategy -  Apply to the four year schools to see what merit aid you can get and use the transfer approach if the merit aid doesn't pan out.

 

What are the cost differentials between NYS CC and the four year SUNY schools these days?

 

(Here in AZ, the CC are way cheaper so unless you get significant merit aid the CC approach will save on total cost.)

[JanetC]

For state schools, this varies so much, based on local factors like directions from the state legislature and how many qualified graduates the state high schools are producing.

For private schools, their USNews rankings depend on bringing in full-time first-time freshmen students with great stats so they dangle recruitment scholarships where necessary. Harvard-type schools don't have to.

In addition to scholarships, be sure to understand whether you qualify for need-based aid, and whether that aid is awarded any differently to transfers.

Edited November 5, 2016 by JanetC

[Gwen in VA]

The "no merit aid for transfers" isn't an iron-clad rule.

 

When dd applied to transfer, two of the three schools she applied to offered her merit aid.

 

So YMMV on that "rule".

[Lori D.]

There ARE transfer scholarships to just about every school. It's just that many schools offer the largest merit aid, and renewable merit aid, as freshman scholarships.

And there are schools out there that offer good transfer scholarships. DS knocked out 2 years of credits at the local community college, transferred to an in-state (but out-of-city) 4-year university for his remainiing 2 years of the BA, and because of his extremely high GPA from the CC, was given a half-tuition renewable scholarship (which is the highest that school also offers freshmen, with the exception of full-tuition athletic scholarships). He not only was able to renew that scholarship for his second year, but also landed another partial scholarship that was a leadership position scholarship.

The son of a friend also did the CC route and went to the in-town state university, and got the 1-year transfer scholarship and then managed to land a partial scholarship through his department.

So look into what kinds of other scholarships (beyond freshman merit aid) are available at the universities you are checking out besides just transfer student scholarships:

- departmental scholarships
- upperclassman only scholarships
- leadership scholarships
- service scholarships

Also, if you knock out 1-2 years of credits at a CC and have a high GPA, definitely do the one-time fee to join Phi Theta Kappa. Just about every branch offers scholarships for transfer students, and those are independent of what university the student is transferring to. Do note that the deadline to apply for these are usually in November/December for transferring the following AUTUMN to a 4-year school. We missed that deadline, and so missed out on the potential of a $500 Phi Theta Kappa award -- not a lot, but that would have covered book costs for 1.5 semesters...

Edited September 17, 2018 by Lori D.

[The Girls' Mom]

There is also this, that while pretty competitive, is an awesome last dollar scholarship just for transfer students:  http://www.jkcf.org/scholarship-programs/undergraduate-transfer/

[G5052]

It really varies. The school DS is transferring to has a lot of need-based transfer scholarships, and the program he's going into has quite a few merit-based scholarships.

 

He has had really good merit scholarships at the community college, so that has dropped what I expected to spend on the first two years significantly. Even if he doesn't get one of the transfer scholarships, we'll still be ahead because the merit aid at that school when he applied during high school was almost nothing.