Dear Partner Colleges,
We have good news to share with you! After giving it careful consideration, TheDream.US has decided to increase its maximum award for our National Scholarship Program from $25,000 to $29,000 for tuition and fees. Our stipend of $1,000 per year ($4,000 maximum) for books, supplies, and transportation will remain in place for qualifying Scholars. This change will be effective with the award payments for the Fall of 2017.
The cost of tuition and fees at our Partner Colleges has increased over the 4 years we have been giving awards. This increase has largely fallen on the shoulders of our Scholars (and their families) – most of whom are already working many hours to both support their college educations and their families. While our increase of 13.8% exceeds the national average for the last 4 years, it also anticipates increases over the next 4 – 5 years.
We know that increasing our award will reduce the number of scholarships that we can award in the future but, with the support of our National Advisory Board, we decided that our first responsibility is to our current Scholars and ensuring that they have the financial support needed to earn a bachelor’s degree.
We remain committed to supporting an affordable college education and will continue to depend on you to help our Scholars close any gap between the cost of tuition and fees and our award. This award cannot be used to displace any state, institutional , or other scholarship aid that you make available to our Scholars. Our goal is to reduce our Scholars’ out-of-pocket costs.
An email announcing this award increase will be sent to our new and current Scholars soon and we will also update our website and materials over the next couple of days. In the meantime, please see the attached FAQ for more information. Note that this increase applies only to our National Scholarship; there is no increase to our Opportunity Scholarship.
We will answer more of your questions during our upcoming Partner College Orientation on August 15th.
Best,
TheDream.US