By Fatema Zaara Shaikh, Belmont Voice columnist
Almost every scholarship application starts the same way. Name. School. Grade Point Average. Then, somewhere near the top of the first page, a drop-down menu asks about citizenship. This fall, I have learned to check that menu before anything else. It saves time.
I am a senior at Belmont High School, in the middle of college applications. Like many students who came here from another country, I have spent this fall learning how much of the scholarship world depends on that one question. The choices usually read: U.S. citizen, U.S. national, permanent resident, refugee, asylee. For many, their answers are not on the list, no matter how long they have lived here or how hard they have worked.
Paying for college comes with its own unwritten manual. For immigrant students, half the pages are missing.
Here is what those missing pages say: Federal financial aid, including Pell Grants, and federal student loans which students access through theFree Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — is open only to U.S. citizens and a specific list of “eligible noncitizens.” Many immigrant students are left out. That one rule closes the biggest door first.
Many private scholarships mimic the citizenship requirement. The Coca-Cola Scholars Program, one of the best-known awards in the country at $20,000 each, limits applicants to citizens, nationals, permanent residents, refugees, asylees, and a few humanitarian categories, and says its list follows federal aid rules. Once a big program draws the line there, smaller ones tend to follow.
Massachusetts has done more than most states. In 2023, it passed a tuition equity law that lets students who attended a Massachusetts high school for at least three years qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid, regardless of immigration status. That law matters. But even it has limits: Some colleges’ published rules for that pathway leave out students on certain temporary visas. And no state law changes the thousands of private scholarships that still ask the same question.
The result is a strange statelessness. An immigrant student can sit in American classrooms for years, take the same tests, join the same clubs, and still find that the country where they live has a box for almost everyone except them. Meanwhile, they might have little connection to the country where they were born.
This is not only my problem, nor is it only a Belmont problem. In 2018, about a third of college students in Massachusetts came from immigrant families, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Most are citizens, but the thousands who aren’t face a massive wall, shaped like a drop-down menu, between them and their college dreams.
When scholarships run out, most families turn to loans. That door is also narrow. Without the FAFSA, students can’t get federal student loans. Private lenders will usually lend to students on temporary visas only if a U.S. citizen or permanent resident cosigns, and some immigrant families do not have someone like that to ask. A few lenders skip the cosigner, but those lenders are rare, often limited to certain schools or programs, and they tend to charge higher interest rates.
For me, the lack of scholarships has sharply narrowed my college list. There were schools I wanted to apply to, but I didn’t because I already knew I couldn’t pay for them without aid I cannot get. Every application costs a fee and a little hope, and I couldn’t spend either on a school I knew was out of reach.
The question stopped being which school would give me the greatest opportunity to learn and grow, and became which school I could possibly pay for. Those are not always the same school. Of course, many non-immigrant students must also narrow their choices for financial reasons. Even with financial aid, tuition is still unaffordable for many.
However, scholarships are one way a community tells a young person, “We believe in you, and we are investing in where you go next.” For immigrant students, that promise comes with fine print, like a tiny asterisk at the bottom of the page: *unless you are not a citizen.
All it would take to change that is one more option on the drop-down menu.
Fatema Zaara Shaikh is a senior at Belmont High School who loves reading thrillers, suspense, and rom-com novels; listening to PinkPantheress; and watching old comedy classics. Having grown up in different countries, she loves exploring new cultures, places, and cuisines. She leads Tech4Change, a volunteering club at her school, and cares deeply about sustainability, whether that’s reaching for a reusable bag or making sure something recyclable doesn’t end up in the trash.
