You don't hear about fin aid or scholarships until the spring. For the merit scholarships, they'll email you (if you've been accepted) sometime in February-ish to send them a paragraph explaining why you would like a scholarship, then they send out decisions in May-ish. For the need-based scholarships, they obviously don't decide any of that until you've put in all your fin aid forms. They'll give you your aid package April-ish. For need-based, they come up with your "expected contribution" based on your + your parent's income (NOT on what your parents have or have not given you in the past), then they subtract that number from the total cost of attendance. The remaining amount is covered 50/50 by loans and scholarships. If your loans exceed $24,000, all the rest is covered in scholarship.
As an example: I come from middle-class parents and I worked part-time while I was in school, but my parents don't contribute to my education and my work money went towards rent and whatnot, so I had no money saved up. While I didn't get a merit scholarship, with the way the fin aid gets distributed, I ended up with ~50% scholarship and 50% loans. I was cool with that.
EDIT: didn't realize they had changed the merit scholarship giving a bit this year. Thanks,
chronicidal. Good to know. Also, you should totally come here
🙂
