Most schools of the schools wait until the 3rd and 4th year b/c they know that you are going to graduate for the school. That means you will be in a better position to give back to the scholarship fund.
If they gave the scholarships to the 1st years, their is the risk that the student fails and then the school or organization does not see the benefit of their money.
This makes a lot of financial sense for the schools, but 1st year scholarships still help out and I think a some of schools give students money early on to attract them to the school.
I have heard that OCPM offers a limited number of half-tuition scholarships, but that number decreases each year. They could give 10 for first year students, 6 to second years, and only 4 or 5 to the 3rd and 4th year students because those upperclassmen students who applied themself are getting a lot of other scholarship monies by then. I'm not sure if that is entirely true or not, but it would make sense to me as an alternate strategy of dividing up the school's scholarship fundings.
At Barry, I got a $4000 per year merit scholarship which is renewable each of my four years by me getting only a 3.0 GPA. Most of my classmates got that same merit scholarship (most people won't openly discuss it, but seems to range from maybe $2000-8000 per year depending on the person and GPA/MCAT before they entered). Even for students who didn't get that 3.0 to keep the scholarship, other smaller ($1000-1500 per year) scholarships are there from the University for students who currently are not receiving any other scholarships.
There are always outside scholarships for any year like the state-of-residency based scholarships, minority scholarships, and AAWP scholarships also.
You are certainly right that the biggest scholarships from the schools themself seem to be for 3rd and 4th year students, though. Here at Barry, we also have the Dean's clinical scholarships which gives the top half dozen or so 3rd year clinical students around $6000 or more toward their 4th year. That scholarship is a big help during externships, and I hope to be considered for it. There's always APMA, FPME, and PICA scholarships that are for upperclassmen also. It does seem that there is certainly more money for you the further you get, and I'm glad for that since I'm nearing the 3rd year now. My family helps out minimally where they can, but unlike some pod students, I don't have two doctors/lawyers/entrepreneurs as parents lol
