Scholarships From FOSS Organizations?

Athaulf writes "I'm a high school kid with big dreams of prestigious technology schools like MIT or Cal-Tech. The problem is, my upper-middle class family had more down to Earth plans for me and my college choices (about $30,000/year more down to Earth, actually), so financial aid and college savings won't come anywhere near MIT's price tag. However, I've been programming in C for a while now, and might release a GPL'd Linux app soon. With this self-taught programming experience, academic merit, and plenty of extra curricular activities, are there any FOSS supporting organizations who might grant me a scholarship for my contributions? Do companies like Google or Red-Hat offer scholarships to big name schools in return for a few years of work after college?"

umm

[coffeeandjava]

no

study abroad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to say, Sweden, there will be no tuition fees. You have two decent Unis there: The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg. You may also check out DTU in Denmark and the unis in Aachen and Dresden (Germany).

In a lot of European states you can get away with 0 in tuition fees or a very moderate fee of a 1000 per year. For $30k / year you can live a very comfortable life as a student in Europe.

Also, having studied abroad is something that would look very good on your CV.

Re:You're just paying for the brand name.

[1point618]

And, not only will it put you at advantage going into any job, it is because the education at MIT is fantastically great. Some of the best professors in the world teach there, much of the most interesting research in the world is done there, and as an undergrad even you have those resources at your fingertips. Not only that, but the other people at MIT are a very interesting bunch, some of the smartest 20 year olds in the nation, all packed together. It's really something special. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I don't go there, but I've visited and had friends who did, and it's really something else, and going there won't just be a pretty name on your resume. Sure, you can get a fantastic education in hundreds of universities in the US and elsewhere, but it is much easier to get a good education at some of these "name" schools. That doesn't mean the education is easier (it's not; CS is freaking hard at my school), but it does mean that it won't be an uphill battle to get that education.

Loans? Grants? Scholarships?

[beefstu01]

It actually kind of annoys me that people expect their parents to pay for college. Yeah, it'd be nice, but you expect all of the freedom of being an adult without any of the responsibility...

I went to Cornell and managed to pay the entire bill myself. I've got a quite a bit of student debt, but I've also got a really good job that's allowing for me to pay off my bills very quickly. Go to a good school, you get good opportunities afterwards (contrary to popular belief, name recognition goes a long way). Fill out your FAFSA, use the power of Google to find scholarships and fight for 'em, and whatever the government and really nice people don't give you, pull out in private loans (Sallie Mae, etc...). Heck, interest rates are basically at rock bottom right now, so you won't get hosed. Having a loans also helps motivate you, trust me. You're less likely to goof off (still have fun, but not blow off work), plus you get fiscally responsible pretty quickly (a lot faster than most of your classmates).

Anyway, stepping off of my soapbox of "pay for yourself," as it looks like thats you're trying to do, I don't think many (if any) company will pay for your education right now this moment. After you're in college for a year or two, however, some of these opportunities crop up, but I've seen them more in the financial sector than in tech. Get an internship or two and it'll help you immensely financially and get a job after college. If you're as good as you say you are, you should be able to find one freshman year- go to the career fair with a good resume AFTER meeting with your career services center to get it brushed up, and practice some interview skills (some say it doesn't matter, and it may not, but it will most definitely help you stand out from the crowd). There is ONE program that I know of that is what you're looking for, but it ain't FOSS-- look up the "Stokes Educational Scholarship Program" for the NSA. They will pay tuition and books, and give you summer internships in return for 1.5x your stay in college (4 years undergrad, 6 years NSA).

Re:trust me don't do it.

[1point618]

Perhaps I am just a "college kid". However, the majority of my friends are actually out of college, many of them married with children, so I feel that I have at least a little bit of perspective on this. I know plenty of them who got 6 figures or a high 5 figures out of college, even 5 years ago.

Also, as far as anyone has ever told me and I've ever seen, grad school for engineering and ESPECIALLY for CS is completely worthless for getting a job, and is done almost only by those who wish to go into academia. Sure, 2 years of Business school might be required after 5 or so years in the work force in order to get a managerial position that really pays bank, but that's far in the future. Places like MS and Google and Yahoo! are hiring kids out of my school at 75k or more a year for software engineering jobs (there is obviously a variance, and some jobs get a lower salary).

Finally, I'm sorry critical thinking was dead at your college, but that is not the case here, and does not seem to be the case at many of the colleges my friends go to. Quite honestly, that seems to be one of the largest differences between some of the "better" schools and some of the lesser-known schools, which is just a sense I get from talking to my few high school friends who went to Ivy or equivalent schools and comparing our experiences to those who went elsewhere. It's not to say that they're not getting good educations, but that level of critical thinking, especially outside of classes, largely seems to be lacking, making some of them really unhappy.

A Few Clarifications

[Athaulf]

1. My parents are NOT contributing $30K/year to my education, they've saved $10K/year for a public school. The $30,000 comes from the fact that MIT is about $40K-$45K ($40K-$10K=$30K) 2. My brother could never find financial aid, and scholarships only go so far. 3. My cousin was accepted to MIT but couldn't find enough money. 4. I'm not saying that I haven't considered public schools; I simply much prefer a school that I'm not in the top 1% of math SAT scores. If that sounds arrogant I apologize, but I'm just tired of going to schools like my high school that don't have a *single* person (student or otherwise) who knows C. 5. I want to go to MIT because I think that I can learn something about programming from other students and teachers (the computer programming class is taught with JavaScript and teachers certified by a one day course) for the first time in my life. 6. Yes, Mr. Troll, I'd say McDonalds could be called work. 7. Yes, I was about to call the MIT admissions office, but my mother brought up the argument "don't even try, we won't have the money for that", hence this ask slashdot article. 8. I want to find scholarships from FOSS organizations because I want to support the community and working for a FOSS company would be a dream come true. I love Linux and free software, and would be proud to put some time into the cause. 9. I hate to respond to my own article, but I felt like I needed to clear up a few things.

Take out some loans

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

All of the top U.S. schools offer fantastic financial assistance. First of all, they all practice need-blind admissions - meaning that they don't care how much money you have when deciding if you should be admitted. Once you're admitted, they'll send you a financial package, based on the information they got from your FAFSA and other forms. Unless your parents make a million dollars a year, you're almost certainly going to get a small grant (i.e. free money) and some loans.

If the total remaining amount you and your parents are supposed to pay is still to high, no problem - that's just their initial offer. They will negotiate - the job of the financial aid office is to make it so that you can attend. Let them know how much your parents are willing to spend, and see what they can do for you. If you're lucky, they will find some grants and scholarships to cover more of the difference, and they will definitely offer more loans. Not crappy loans like a car loan or credit card - college loans often have no interest while you're in school, and very low interest rates after that.

And trust me, if you're going into software engineering, some loans are no big deal. You'll get a nice salary and pay them off in a few years, and it will all be worth it.

One thing, though - the financial offer you'll get will vary dramatically from school to school. Virtually all good schools have great financial aid programs that can negotiate with you - but they all value different things and have different rules. Your best bet is to apply and get accepted to a lot of great schools - MIT, Caltech, CMU, Harvard, Yale, UTexas, UIUC, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvey Mudd - and then pick one of the ones with the best financial offer for you.

Re:Join the Army

[1point618]

You obviously don't know what you're talking about. There are still awesome research opportunities in the military. What about Nuclear research? What about tactical ops? What about intelligence gathering? What about, for something CS related, cryptology? Or programming the tanks, submarines, etc, that will be going out? A lot of this is still done in-house, the people they have doing this are not folks they are going to endanger by putting them in line of fire. This doesn't mean that there is no chance of being shipped out to Iraq, but if you go to the military, especially the US Navy, on an engineering track of some sort, then you can apply to certain jobs when you get into the Navy, and it's not the same blind chance an enlisted man or a new officer who is going to be leading troops will have.

Listen, I don't love the military in any sense, but as a practical choice, it's not as bad as many folks make it out to be. Someone with an engineering degree isn't simply a "warm body" to the military, especially if they're coming straight into the military from college rather than having gone through college after the military in order to become an officer. There are different career paths within the military, especially Navy, that can lead to many different places, and that pay incredibly well.

Re:Education is an investment

[pclinger]

The problem is, my upper-middle class family had more down to Earth plans for me and my college choices (about $30,000/year more down to Earth, actually)

Pretty he didn't mean his parents would pay $30k, he meant they wanted to pay $30k less than what MIT costs. If they included housing costs, that means $15k/year, if they weren't including that then they would only be offering $5k/year.

Doesn't discount your other points, but I believe clarification was needed.

Re:You're just paying for the brand name.

[Bryan Ischo]

No offense man, but you are kidding yourself. Your degree from MTU (whatever that is) is not as good as a degree from M.I.T. and anyone doing interviews for a desirable software development company knows this and will take this into account when considering your resume. This is not a value judgment about you personally, but it is true, and you really ought not to delude yourself about it. There are certainly jobs where both you and an M.I.T. grad could both apply and be equally well qualified, but chances are that there are also jobs that the M.I.T. graduate will get offered and you won't. The M.I.T. grad's resume will get them in the door for an interview, but yours won't, and just because he has M.I.T. on his resume and you don't. Don't kid yourself, it will happen.

And there is good reason for it, too. M.I.T. provides a better computer science education than just about anywhere else. And it's miles better than that available at schools which are not known for computer science. Employers know this, and it's why they will rate the M.I.T. resume higher than the MTU resume. Employers desperately want to save time in the interview process, it is a tremendous waste of time to interview candidates that are clearly not qualified, and so they are always looking for ways to improve the quality of the candidates that they invite for interviews. And the school you graduated from, is a very very easy way to do this weeding. Now there are superstars that graduate from no-name schools and duds that graduate from M.I.T., and employers know this, which is why they don't look *just* at the school when deciding who to interview. But it is a big factor, whether or not you realize it, and it is very justified.

You are right though that if your resume is good enough to get you to the interview, the school you went to is not particularly relevent. But first, you have to acknowledge that the M.I.T. degree will open doors that your degree will not, and will land more and better interviews. Just accept it, because it's true. And second, you have to realize that the average grad from M.I.T. is just going to be better qualified and thus a better interview than the average grad from MTU, so on average, the M.I.T. guys will get the better jobs.

Once again, nothing about this is personal to you, because maybe you would interview really well and get the job anyway. But you have to accept that where you went to college does correlate with your qualifications, and employers know that.

Financial aid is better at big name schools

[Nobody123]

Harvard, Yale and MIT have all come out with very strong financial incentives this year. Essentially free for families making $75,000 and large financial aid for others. I expect to hear more from other schools (think Stanford and Duke are now in the act, but I don't know their details) The big name schools end up actually cheaper than schools without such a large endowment, and in some cases cheaper than state schools. Even if you don't make these cuts, if there is one thing in life not to skimp on, it's your undergraduate education, since a huge fraction of your earning power is driven by this, especially in the first decade or so out of college. Student loans are essentially free of interest (interest rates at or less than inflation, and you can take the interest directly off your tax bill), and there are a ton of little grants around that you can gather to make things work. And your lifelong contacts/friends will be made in college.

Re:MIT's website...

[amabbi]

However, the key is whether you can afford it. They have sophisticated metrics for figuring out what your family can afford to pay without undue hardship

It's not a sophisticated metric. At MIT, if you're family has an annual income less than $75k, tuition is free [mit.edu]. I think that's pretty affordable. I only wish this was the case 10 years ago when I was a student.

Re:Join the Army

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

I suppose I'm just a bit cynical about trusting the military's ability to use people's talents correctly, but I hope I didn't make the military out to be a bad choice, since I came out of it with the ability to step into a decent career. It's probably even a bit better than corporate America in terms of the density of stupid people and bad decisions. And it is true that making a choice like joining the Navy is a good way to avoid landing at a guard shack in Iraq with a rifle.

However, I still don't think the DoD is using active duty military personnel to do a lot of the actual research and engineering tasks, but that's just based on my experience with the Navy. All the people I worked with that were doing those jobs--like nuclear research and power plant design, for example--were civilian employees or contractors, every single one. Maybe they were former enlisted or officers in that field, but they weren't able to do any of the actual "design/build/program something" jobs until they were hired as civilians and put in their time in the civilian side. The active duty officers in those technical fields were little more than supervisors/managers of the enlisted people, and (again, in my limited experience) the enlisted guys actually had most of the direct experience with the technology, while the officers did a lot of admin/paperwork and stood the occasional supervisory watch.

So I still maintain that for 99%+ of the cases, going into the military, with or without a degree, in a technical, not-so-likely-to-be-on-front-lines field, is more likely to result in:

• Spending 8+ hours per day sitting in front of a panel full of instruments or wall full of valves
• Supervising somebody sitting in front of a panel full of instruments or wall full of valves
• Cleaning something
• Painting something
• Doing paperwork
• Supervising people cleaning and painting things

than in doing research. However, having that experience for 6, 12, or 20 years would put one in a good spot to move on to doing R&D for the military for the equipment you used to work with. It just doesn't seem right to me to pitch the military as a good option for jumping into a research opportunity for anybody except the very top-notch graduates in a field.

Re:Education is an investment

[EnvyRAM]

If your parents will foot 30k, that's only 15k year you need to pay.

I think he meant his parents were thinking 30k/yr less than what MIT costs -- not that they were willing to pay 30k.

If you think that's too much, go to a good community college for the first two years, transfer, and still get that MIT degree.

The chances of this are EXTREMELY slim. MIT takes a MAXIMUM of 4 transfer students a year and sometimes they don't take any. I happen to know of two community college students that transferred to MIT, but they were 15 year old, home-schooled siblings. Only the most exceptional people can transfer in. It is harder than getting in as a freshman because you have to hit the ground running at the speed they expect MIT juniors to be at. It would be very hard for most people to adapt.

MIT announcement: Tuition-free for 30% of students

[sidney]

MIT announced in a press release [mit.edu] a couple of weeks ago that they are increasing financial aid so that the school will be tuition-free for the nearly 30% of undergraduate students whose families earn less than $75,000 per year, with no expectation of student loans to cover non-tuition expenses. There are other changes that affect students whose families are in higher income brackets, with details in the press release.

Here is one significant quote from it:

For those receiving an MIT scholarship, which is six out of every 10 MIT undergraduates, net tuition is $8,100--an amount that approximates the in-state cost of many public universities

Re:trust me don't do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

take a look at google summer of code 4500$ for completing a summer coding project with an organization.

Re:trust me don't do it.

[betterunixthanunix]

Really? I'm still an undergrad in college (double major, EE and CS), and I'm getting offers for internships that pay more than my parents make. IBM offered to cover the cost of grad school, if I committed to a job with them. All that, despite the current economic downturn. If money is all you care about, then going to college is obvious -- just ask the guys in my EE classes who already did work in the industry, but can't get promoted without a degree.

Beyond that, there is something to be said for a formal education. I was "self taught" in high school also, and thought that I would be able to handle any problem. I couldn't have been more wrong, and in my senior year of high school, when I began taking real CS courses, I learned things that I would never have grasped without a teacher. The sort of things I am studying now can't be "self taught," because in at least one case I am learning it directly from the researcher who made the discovery. Overall, a formal education not only provided me with new ways of thinking about my majors and related fields, but it also broadened my ability to solve problems, both in terms of scope and approach.

Going directly into trade after high school is a waste of time and of talent. Is college expensive? Unfortunately, yes. Is it worth the expense? Absolutely.

MIT just announced: no tuition for $75k/yr fams

[CrazyWingman]

You may want to look into MIT again. They just announced a couple of weeks ago that students from families that earn less than $75k/yr. will not have to pay tuition. They've also changed the factors they look at to determine financial aid for other income levels:

Fin. Aid Boosted; No Tuition For Families Earning Under $75K [mit.edu]

MIT has also always had a policy of basically, "You get in, and we'll help you figure out how to afford it."

A couple more things:

• Students loans are *not* as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Especially graduating from a place like MIT, where you can expect $50+k/yr at your first job. It's also the "good" kind of debt - low interest rates, and interest payments that can be deducted on taxes.
• Don't believe the anti-college (or anti-prestige) hype. It is absolutely worth it to spend four years at a place like MIT. It is true that you can gimp your way through and get nothing more out of it than any other school (or "real-world" experience) would give you. But, if you really want to do something exciting/amazing/etc., there's no easier place to make it happen than a place where you're surrounded by other bright/smart/energetic people.

Disclaimer: I graduated from MIT, and would not trade that experience for anything.

Re:Join the Army

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

The key is to research what jobs are there and don't believe the recruiter; get anything in writing.

I think that's probably the best single piece of advice that can be given to somebody looking into any job that requires X years of commitment. I worked around a few people that got crappy jobs in the military despite having qualifications (degrees, etc.) for much better jobs, most likely because they met the wrong recruiter that had a quota to make.

8+ - I want your billet. More like 16+; including weekends once you through in drills and fixing stupid crap sailors do when they aren't busy.

Eh, I wanted to be conservative, since there are some niches in the military where it seems like having to be there for more than an hour after the flag goes up is considered a long stressful day. I had one of the jobs with fun times like having a 1 hour pre-shift brief, standing watch for 12 hours, then having an hour of training (at which we got a lecture from the CO about how we should count ourselves fortunate that we're here working and not dead like the poor guy that was hit by a street sweeper on the way to work), then having to come back 10 hours later to do it all again for weeks at a time with no days off. That's why I'm not there anymore (well, that, and I don't do well in super-structured environments).

...fixing stupid crap sailors do when they aren't busy

ROFL..."I'm bored...let's break something! Preferably something new and expensive!"

Re:trust me don't do it.

[Stalus]

Also, as far as anyone has ever told me and I've ever seen, grad school for engineering and ESPECIALLY for CS is completely worthless for getting a job, and is done almost only by those who wish to go into academia.

As someone who works for a large tech company, let me just say that you've been very misled. The differences aren't immediately obvious, but you need to think a little bit beyond starting salary.

Promotion ceiling. You may start off with a salary that's only 10-15k below someone with an MS, but I have encountered a large number of people who have gone back to school because they can't get promoted without a better degree. In fact, I can't think of anyone I know that's over the age of 35 and doesn't have at least an MS. A large number went back to school after they had kids and continually grumbled about how hard it was with a family.

Job types. Those with BS's are much more likely to find themselves in a low-level position - implementation, support, bug fixing. People with graduate degrees are more likely to be in the design and project lead positions. Not only is this a factor in the promotion issue I already raised, but who do you think is easier to outsource? When times are tough, who are they going to lay off?

Just to emphasize the point, I was planning on stopping with my BS when the .com bust happened, and ended up going back to grad school at a Big 10 university. Applications for graduate schools in 2002 and 2003 were extremely high. High enough that schools were caught off guard when people who they expected to get in to MIT, CMU, Berkeley, etc ended up accepting their offers. Enough accepted that I heard many stories of schools that were overcommitted for financial aid. Unfortunately, I only have one data point for the mixture that were returning students, but around 20-25% of our class were people who had been in successful IT jobs and had gone back to grad school because they had trouble finding jobs. It led to an interesting mix of professional and academic experience.

Now, does this mean that you can't be successful with just a BS? No. Heck, I knew a kid out of high school that was pulling in over 100k managing IT for some small company during the .dot boom. But, he eventually went back to school too.

My point though is that if you want better job security, you want more freedom of action and responsibility, and a better likelihood of higher pay in the long run, the 24 credit hours for the MS is well worth it.

Get Your Facts Straight

[langelgjm]

Uh, no. The Google founders went to Standford.

First of all, it's Stanford, not "Standford."

Second of all, do some basic research before talking out your ass. While both Brin and Page went to Stanford for graduate school, for undergrad, Brin went to the University of Maryland, and Page went to the University of Michigan.

Internships

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting a paid internship with a company. Go to your local college, check their internship listings and contact the company directly. Or, if you've been accepted to an university, check about their internships and contact those companies. You'll probably get college credit out of it.

Back in '96 I interened for a Fortune 500 company. I was one of 6 students hired at the equivelant of a $35,000 annual salary for a 33.5 hour work week. They expected 7.5hr days, including lunch, with summer hours, which meant everyone went home at lunchtime on Friday.

I was lucky and was hired by the Data Warehouse team, which was the bleeding edge of the organization and I had a great manager that taught me a lot and allowed interns to grow as much as they wanted to. At the end he was even surprised at how much ground I covered in those months. One example is that when I first started he gave me a bunch of exercises so I could learn Oracle and SQL because he was in a training class that week. I was done by the time he came back during lunch to check his email.

Anyways, check the internships. They may be meant for college students, but it sounds like you might have the ability to pull it off.

Re:interesting point on picking schools

[Jane_Dozey]

Yes, this was one thing I was told to do before picking a University (UK). I did a quick google on various teachers in the CS dept of my top University choices. One of them stood out as all of the teachers were on the first results page and after all the other considerations I went to that University and have never regretted my choice.

Obviously there are a ton of things to look at when choosing a University or other higher education Institution but this is one of the things that should be done. It's a shame that so few people do.