My oldest will be going off to college next year. For those of you with younger kids who are holding out hope that soccer will pay for your kid's college, I wanted to share my own testimony.
My oldest kid played soccer fairly well, but then dropped out at 10th grade. Meanwhile, my second child excelled more in soccer and is still at it, though its doubtful the second kid will get any kind of scholarship.
My oldest kid hit the books and qualified for a bright futures scholarship:
https://www.floridastudentfinanciala...okChapter1.pdf
There are two tiers for Bright futures, with the lower tier requiring a 3.0 GPA and the higher tier requiring a 3.5 GPA. With so much grade inflation these days, the GPA isn't the tricky part to qualifying. The tricky part is the SAT/ACT score. There are other requirements like the types of coursework and volunteer work, but the SAT test seems to be the stumbling block. It's worth noting that the SAT test was curved by about 100 points about 20 years ago. So some of you older folks who took the SAT test should know it's a little easier than it was.
In the end, my oldest qualified for the highest tier, and will have 100% of her tuition paid, plus a $300 stipend for books per semester (which is about half of what they cost). So if she goes to school locally, college is practically free, except for living expenses.
Room and board (food) will run close to about $11,000 a year at most of the Florida Schools. But some of the smaller Florida colleges have incentive scholarships that have similar qualifications and similar payouts to bright futures, so we figure we really need to worry about half of the dorm/food bills. We plan to try to close the rest of the gap with private scholarships, and if that doesn't work, and we don't qualify for financial aid, then our plan is for our kid to take out low interest student loans and I'll pay down the loans while she's in school.
Knowing what I know now, my kids will focus more on academics with an eye toward making sure they smoke the SAT test.
In my experience, I've seen a lot of anxiety as parents push their kids to soccer greatness to get a scholarship. In reality, I think it makes more sense to just pursue soccer as a fun activity where they can blow off steam and push them toward scholastics.
My oldest kid played soccer fairly well, but then dropped out at 10th grade. Meanwhile, my second child excelled more in soccer and is still at it, though its doubtful the second kid will get any kind of scholarship.
My oldest kid hit the books and qualified for a bright futures scholarship:
https://www.floridastudentfinanciala...okChapter1.pdf
There are two tiers for Bright futures, with the lower tier requiring a 3.0 GPA and the higher tier requiring a 3.5 GPA. With so much grade inflation these days, the GPA isn't the tricky part to qualifying. The tricky part is the SAT/ACT score. There are other requirements like the types of coursework and volunteer work, but the SAT test seems to be the stumbling block. It's worth noting that the SAT test was curved by about 100 points about 20 years ago. So some of you older folks who took the SAT test should know it's a little easier than it was.
In the end, my oldest qualified for the highest tier, and will have 100% of her tuition paid, plus a $300 stipend for books per semester (which is about half of what they cost). So if she goes to school locally, college is practically free, except for living expenses.
Room and board (food) will run close to about $11,000 a year at most of the Florida Schools. But some of the smaller Florida colleges have incentive scholarships that have similar qualifications and similar payouts to bright futures, so we figure we really need to worry about half of the dorm/food bills. We plan to try to close the rest of the gap with private scholarships, and if that doesn't work, and we don't qualify for financial aid, then our plan is for our kid to take out low interest student loans and I'll pay down the loans while she's in school.
Knowing what I know now, my kids will focus more on academics with an eye toward making sure they smoke the SAT test.
In my experience, I've seen a lot of anxiety as parents push their kids to soccer greatness to get a scholarship. In reality, I think it makes more sense to just pursue soccer as a fun activity where they can blow off steam and push them toward scholastics.
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