How to Get a Bright Futures Scholarship
The Bright Futures scholarships are awarded to Florida high school graduates for high academic achievement. Three awards are offered by the program:
- Florida Academic Scholars (FAS) including the Academic Top Scholars (ATS) award
- Florida Medallion Scholars (FMS) award
- Florida Gold Seal Vocational Scholars (GSV) award
Eligibility Requirements for the Bright Futures Scholarship Program
- Florida resident and either a United State citizen or eligible non-citizen. Theses statutes are determined by the applicant’s high school
- No loan default under any state or federal grant loan or scholarship program unless satisfactory repayment agreements exist.
- Meet specific coursework and GPA and test score requirements as enumerated by the Office of Student Financial Assistance (OSFA)
- ATS – Academic Top Scholars award as announced by the Florida Department of Education. The recipient of this award receives a cost-per-credit-hour award.
- Complete and submit the “Free Application for Federal Student Award” (FAFSA). This FAFSA does not require a statement of financial need, but it must otherwise be complete and error-free prior to the first student disbursement of the 2011-12 academic year.
The Bright Futures Scholarships apply only to the students who have met the above requirements and attend a college or university within the state of Florida and applies solely to undergraduate coursework. The Bright Futures Scholarships are funded by the Florida State Lottery.
The Bright Futures Scholarship program was initiated in 1997. Originally this program paid out 42,000 scholarship awards at around $70 million dollars. Over the past ten years, the program has inflated substantially with the current costs hovering at the $436 million dollar mark with approximately 170,000 students taking advantage of the awards. Actually, the concept initially was to keep raising the requirements annually for attaining the Bright Futures Scholarships, thereby maintaining control of the amount of financial expenditures. This concept was never put in operation allowing the scholarship payouts to balloon to precarious levels.
Future of the Bright Futures Scholarship Program
The Bright Futures Scholarship program has been cut for 2011, a most unfortunate timing event as the tuition in Florida’s state colleges and universities has risen yet again. The program lost $100 million in federal funding giving rise to the serious question regarding the taxpayer’s continuing ability to pay for it. As stated earlier, the initial concept of the program was to keep increasing eligibility requirements as the program went on, thus reducing the number of scholarships and the outlay of funds. This failed to occur and given the low eligibility requirements, students are flocking to apply for the scholarships.
Florida legislators are weighing several ideas as to how to save the Bright Futures Scholarship program. One idea is to require students to repay the money if they don’t remain in Florida after graduation. Another is to make scholarships available only to families demonstrating financial need.
The numbers are clear as to why the program’s future is cloudy. A hefty 88% of freshmen students attending public state universities qualify for the scholarship. At the University of Florida, it’s 98%, and the median family income for those students is $105,000.