Ole Miss provides huge amount of financial aid for freshmen

The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) is known as the one of the largest universities in United States. According to the enrollment fact book at Ole Miss, the number of freshmen is increasing even though college enrollment is nationally declining. Ole Miss recorded a continued higher number of students for almost 20 years. The large amount of financial aid is one of the main reasons that attract many students to choose Ole Miss.

Laura Driven-Brown tells about how many scholarships the University of Mississippi has.

According to Director of Financial Aid Laura Driven-Brown, the University of Mississippi has a hundred of scholarships and more unknown scholarships outside school are available. Driven-Brown says, “We have UM foundation scholarships, each department scholarships, Honors College and we have other scholarships, too.” 

Driven-Brown says, “I don’t know it is directly related to the increasing enrollment, however, it is important to get more students and it cause college to continue to rise. Scholarship is so important to make possible for somebody to go to school. The foundation is consistently trying to get more donors. Scholarship will help people to decide to come here, and scholarship can be offered based on the needs.”

These days, the theme of scholarship is to make sure that everyone is well-informed about how much it will be spent to go to school individually. Ole Miss sets the amount of scholarship based on the direct costs and indirect costs. The direct cost includes a housing fee, meal plans, capital improvement fee, and non-residents fee. The indirect cost consists of personal expenses, transportation fee and so on. Compared to other state universities, Ole Miss has affordable costs and this makes more people get into. 

Kylan Toohey says about why she decided to get into Ole Miss in the JD Williams Library. 

Kylan Toohey is a freshman international studies major from Madison, Mississippi. She says, “I chose Ole Miss over Emory University because I could get relatively large amount of scholarships, compared to others.” She added, “Another reason is that the Croft at Ole Miss has international studies programs better than others.”  She was planning to get into Emory University in Atlanta before getting an admission for Ole Miss. Another reason she chose Ole Miss is that she is able to go home once a month because Ole Miss (Oxford Campus) is not far from Madison, Mississippi. “It takes only two hours back home. I like that.”

Jiwon Lee, senior at Oxford High School in Oxford, Mississippi, will enter Ole Miss next fall semester. She says, “I am supposed to get a scholarship related to participation into the band and the orchestra...I am very excited to be in Ole Miss next semester.” 

The University of Mississippi is in transition to managing the increasing number of students by expanding the number of scholarships offered.