The Challenge for Financial Aid

It’s the $47,000 question students ask every year. How can I afford to attend Boston College?

The answer is with a lot of help—69 percent of BC undergraduates currently receive some form of financial assistance. Boston College does its part by providing scholarships that have been established by alumni and friends in its endowment, but these endowed scholarships fund only 12 percent of BC’s overall financial aid budget. To make up the difference, most students turn to loans, which they need to repay upon graduation.

So, in an effort to ease this burden, an anonymous donor who has long supported financial aid at BC generously provided a $5 million gift that has become the basis of The Challenge for Financial Aid at Boston College.

While its reach and impact will be profound, the challenge is simple: Create 100 newly endowed scholarships, so that future generations of students can continue to attend BC based on their potential to succeed, not on their ability to afford tuition.

During the challenge, donors who commit $200,000 over three years to a newly endowed scholarship will receive a $50,000 match from the challenge donor.

“We gave because an endowed scholarship lasts in perpetuity, and it will help multiple recipients over many years,” says Joseph V. Popolo Jr. ’89, who with his wife, Christine, established the Popolo Family Scholarship in response to the challenge. “In turn, we hope those individuals will remember their experience at BC and be in a position to return the favor to someone else in financial need.”

The challenge arrives at an opportune time, when the percentage of BC’s endowed scholarships compared to the total financial aid budget has remained virtually static during the past decade.

“An endowed scholarship made possible my dream of attending Boston College,” says Kelly Lyons ’10, recipient of the Malcolm McLoud ’28 Scholarship. “I simply wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise, and I’m most grateful the scholarship that Dr. Theresa McLoud ’64 established in memory of her father has now helped me.”

Twenty-five scholarships have been established to date.