Little Known Facts about Florida Bright Futures

Posted on by Kennon McCaa

Here’s a quick true or false quiz for you about Florida Bright Futures….

  1. Bright Futures covers either 75% or 100% of tuition.
  2. Bright Futures covers room and board.
  3. Tuition is the biggest portion of paying for a public university in Florida.

The correct answers are:

  1. True, Bright Futures covers tuition.
  2. False, Bright Futures does NOT cover room and board.
  3. False, tuition is about 25% of the cost of attending a public university in Florida. Looking at my son’s bills (which are very confusing), it breaks down about like this: Housing 40%, Meals 30%, Tuition 25% and Fees 5%.

Bright Futures is Nice, but Benacquisto is Amazing

There’s actually something even better that most families don’t know about, until it is too late.

What is the Benacquisto Scholarship?

The Benacquisto Scholarship covers EVERYTHING for Florida students attending a public Florida university. My son qualified for it, and we literally pay nothing for him to go to school. In fact, he even gets cash back each semester. Currently, USF even pays him an additional $5,000/year and covers one year of post-graduate tuition. This far exceeded our expectations when we were studying together for the PSAT. We always thought Benacquisto was a minor upgrade on Bright Futures, but now that I’ve seen the full breakdown of the costs of college, and what Bright Futures does NOT pay, I can see the extra effort to earn this scholarship saved our family an additional $50,000, and earned him $50,000.

How does a student earn a Benacquisto Scholarship?

The Benacquisto Scholarship is only for Florida students that are National Merit Scholars. Only 1% of students qualify to be National Merit Scholars (“NMS”), so it isn’t easy, but it is worth it! First of all, to qualify as a NMS, students must score extremely high on the PSAT in the fall (October) of their junior year. So, for this reason, I’ve started recommending SAT (or really PSAT) prep to highly motivated sophomores, especially over the summer before their junior year. Please note that NMS scoring is currently calculated using 1/3 math and 2/3 English, so make sure you study especially hard for the English portion.