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Dyson to College Hopefuls, 'You can get an Education.'
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Dyson to College Hopefuls, 'You can get an Education.'
SOUTHERN MARYLAND - 2/19/2009
By Sen. Roy Dyson
We are at that time of year when high school seniors and their parents contemplate attending college with excitement, high hopes and dread. The dread comes with the reality of the cost of college and how to afford that cost. First, to apply for most State, federal and college need-based financial aid, as well as the Maryland Senatorial or Delegate Scholarship awards, students must complete and submit the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid (FAFSA) by March 1. A paper FAFSA can be obtained from your high school, libraries and by calling the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-433-3243. Also, call this number for help in completing your FAFSA. A FAFSA can be obtained and filed online www.fafsa.ed.gov.
Each year, the State of Maryland awards to Maryland students nearly $95 million in need-based grants and academic merit scholarships through its 28 programs. Each year, 40,000 students get money that ranges from $200 per semester to nearly $18,000 per year. The State also offers graduate and professional scholarship grants up to $5,000 for those enrolled in graduate schools for medicine, dentistry, law, social work, veterinary science, pharmacy or nursing.
There are four basic sources of financial aid – federal, State, colleges and universities, and private sources, such as civic and veterans’ organizations and churches.
The four types of financial aid are:
Among Maryland’s 28 student financial aid programs, the State offers a foster care tuition waiver, which picks up the cost of tuition and fees to two- or four-year State colleges and universities. To be eligible, students must have lived in a foster care home in Maryland at the time they graduated from high school or successfully completed a general equivalency development examination (GED). Also eligible are students who have lives in a Maryland foster care home on their fourteenth birthday and were adopted after their fourteenth birthday.
To get answers to your questions, contact:
The Maryland Higher Education Commission
839 Bestgate Road, Suite 400
Annapolis, MD 21401
410-260-4565 or 1-800-974-1024
TTY 1-800-735-2258
My Senatorial Scholarship is offered to students in my Legislative District. The members of my Scholarship Awards Committee meet 3 times a year to make awards. By Maryland law, in order to be considered, you MUST have filed your FAFSA, be enrolled in a Maryland institute of higher education, (this also includes some trade schools), and be a legal resident of Legislative District 29. You may also be considered if you attend a school out of State if you are pursuing a unique major (a major which is not offered in the State of Maryland). To obtain an application, or to obtain more information, please contact my Annapolis office, at 1 (800) 492-7122, ext. 3673 or my Great Mills Office at (301) 994-2826.
A College Board publication, Education Pays, notes that the typical full-time-year-round worker in the United States with a four-year college degree earned $49,900 or 62 percent more than the $30,800 earned by the typical full-time year-round worker with a high school diploma. The benefit of education cannot be measured in dollars alone, but rather in potential realized and the realization of a fulfilled life.
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