[AnimalMuppet]

If you have a scholarship, this advice may not be good. I think most scholarships expect you to start that fall; if you don't, you may lose the scholarship. (Some or all of them will accept a "gap year", but most won't accept you going to community college for two years and then trying to take the scholarship.

Or at least, that's how I think it is. Your mileage may vary, so if you have a scholarship offer, check the rules for that scholarship rather than listening to me.

[devNoise]

I'm on the fence about how scholarships should factor into the total cost of college. I feel like there is a decent amount of scholarship money freshmen year that disappears after that. So that the student ends up with a lot of student loans debt to finish school. It's all well and good that freshmen at an expensive college will be cheaper than some alternate school. Though is it really going to be cheaper overall? I don't think so and this is how lots of students end up with to much student debt.

[RandomBacon]

I studied engineering. There were a ton of scholaships available to any student. The financial aid office generally never finds out about except that the receive a check from some organization or company and are told to deposit in my account.

There are plenty of scholarships, just the communication about them is extremely poor. You have to get on every mailing list your university has, and constantly ask professors if they've heard about any scholarships.

Many of the scholarships I got were from companies or organizations that reached out directly to professors.

[AnimalMuppet]

Good point. Is it a four-year scholarship, or a one-year scholarship, or a one-year-with-option-to-renew scholarship? If it's the last, how common is renewal? And, do you feel lucky?

[RandomBacon]

Many scholarships are available to students while in college. Many people don't even apply to them because they don't know about them or care at that point.

Where I went, the Student Affairs office knew more about scholarships than the financial aid office.

[RandomBacon]

I wonder why the downvote? If you, or if you have kids going to college, make sure they're on every internal mailing list possible that college has. That's how I found out about a lot of scholarships. I didn't have any debt because I found out about the scholarships and asked staff and professors to nominate me.

A professor who hears about a scholarship, or a department head who emails their staff, generally doesn't think to include the financial aid office, or any other office in the university.