For families with low incomes, the strain of paying for school can be intimidating. This is much more true for families whose children may be taking a look at elite colleges.
While they might be entitled to Pell Grants, those don't always work when faced with an expense of attendance that exceeds your annual income.
Luckily, an answer exists for families with increased modest means and exceptionally talented students.
QuestBridge is a matching service and scholarship program that provides full educational funding to students who demonstrate enormous academic potential.
While its not all high achiever is eligible, which is a competitive process, a QuestBridge Scholarship offers life-changing opportunities.
Who Qualifies for QuestBridge?
A QuestBridge application starts early, with students expected to apply by the summer between junior and senior year. While the process is holistic, two factors emerge as the most significant.
As QuestBridge seeks to provide opportunities for academically talented students, performance factors like grade point average (GPA), test scores, and the concentration of your child's academic program matter.
Scholars are typically in the very best 10 percent of the class, with strong grades in Advanced Placement (AP) and honors-level courses. While test scores aren't required, students typically have scores greater 27 on the ACT or 1260 around the SAT.
Additionally, strong leadership potential should be apparent through extracurriculars, but because QuestBridge sees that lower family income can restrict extracurricular involvement, factors like part-time jobs matter here, too.
Additionally, your family's income is taken into account. An income of below $65,000 for any family of four is the norm for applicants, but this isn't a strict cutoff.
Higher incomes in more expensive parts of the country are also permitted, as are allowances for other family members signed up for college.
Any student residing in go to senior high school in the US can apply, and Us residents or permanent residents can use from abroad. This isn't a course made to help foreign nationals attend American universities.
QuestBridge National College Match Partners
The flagship of the QuestBridge program is the National College Match program. Designed to help students “match” having a top school, students who apply obtain the ability to let you know that their backgrounds could make them more qualified applicants.
Think of this as the chance to help your child rebalance their application against those who have had every possible advantage. After all, colleges actively are seeking the type of work ethic and tenacity that QuestBridge students provide.
For a full listing of the 45 universities that actually work with QuestBridge, check out their site.
Here are a few QuestBridge schools to give you a concept of just how broad reaching this program is:
- Amherst College
- Boston College
- Boston University
- CalTech
- Columbia University
- Davidson College
- Duke University
- Hamilton College
- Pomona College
- Stanford University
- Yale University
The QuestBridge Scholarship Application
Students who're thinking about applying should start researching QuestBridge during spring of the junior year, and begin their application the following summer. After that, eligibility is confirmed, and students receive guidance on what direction to go. Students can choose as much as 12 partner programs after submitting a credit card applicatoin to QuestBridge.
By late October, QuestBridge finalists are notified. These are the students who are probably to achieve a scholarship with QuestBridge.
Other students have access to some QuestBridge resources, but will not go on to the Match Program. From here, finalists clarify any remaining questions from potential match universities, and finalize their rankings of universities.
Here is how things get interesting. Universities and students are then matched-with universities providing QuestBridge having a ranked list of students, to become compared against each student's ranked list of universities.
Once matches are confirmed, those students receive notification that they have been accepted having a full scholarship.
For students who neglect to match, they are able to then affect any program’s regular decision, with the added benefit that they're a QuestBridge finalist.
While 100 % aid isn't guaranteed by QuestBridge, most of the universities that QuestBridge works together with offer full need-based aid. Additionally, as being a QuestBridge finalist is really a prestigious award that sticks out among regular decision applications.
How Much Does QuestBridge Help?
While QuestBridge is primarily a scholarship program, it does offer lots of help on the way.
Students who apply can get college counseling from experts in helping students from more sensible backgrounds gain admittance to a few of the top universities in the country.
For matched students, the advantages of engaging in a university’s Early Decision with a full-ride are remarkable. However, even for students who don't match, the prestige to be a QuestBridge finalist adds significantly to both need-based and merit-based awards.
Financial Qualifications and Awards for QuestBridge
QuestBridge students can expect that the college will meet 100 % of their demonstrated financial need, but including merit awards, educational funding packages have the possibility being full rides.
At any rate, students should be expecting to graduate without loan debt, a major advantage, and have a support that sticks together through college and into their early careers.
Even for students who ultimately aren't selected as finalists, the advantages are considerable. The sort of college advice that comes from the early stages of QuestBridge is efficacious, and may prove especially useful in preparing the best argument when appealing for additional financial aid.
Quest for Excellence Awards
Finally, QuestBridge also provides students extra help with the Pursuit of Excellence awards. These awards help QuestBridge applicants before they become QuestBridge finalists or college students.
Some of the benefits of the Quest for Excellence program include a new laptop, money for traveling for school visits, as well as tuition and travel assistance at a few of the top pre-college summer programs in the united states.
Special awards are offered for that humanities; science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); and a variety of other fields.
For those students whose family incomes are modest and who're high achieving, QuestBridge offers an incredible chance to access that education that's often financially too high.
Students who're interested should start researching the program, as well as its affiliated colleges, in the spring of the junior year to help make the most of it.