The QuestBridge National College Match is designed for high school seniors who have shown outstanding academic ability despite facing economic challenges. Most College Match scholarship recipients come from households earning less than $60,000 annually (for a typical family of four) and have experienced long-term economic hardship.

In order to be eligible to apply in 2012, applicants must graduate from high school during or before the spring/summer of 2013 and plan to enroll as a freshman in college in the fall of 2013.

We do not have absolute criteria for GPA, standardized test scores, or income. When selecting finalists for the National College Match, we try to answer the following questions:

• "Does this student have the motivation and academic ability to thrive at one of our partner colleges?"
• "Has this student overcome socio-economic obstacles to achieve academic excellence?"

QuestBridge selects finalists and then sends the finalist applications to our partner colleges for their review. QuestBridge does not choose College Match scholarship recipients. Partner colleges ultimately make the final selection of scholarship recipients from among the finalists.

Read more about our selection criteria. 

A note about citizenship requirements:

Students who are not U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents may apply to the QuestBridge College Match. However, only some of our partner colleges will consider these students for admission and full scholarships through the College Match process. Most of our partner colleges use federal and state funds to finance a portion of the scholarships, and these funds are only available for U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents. 

The following partner colleges will consider international students (i.e. students who would be attending college in the U.S. on a visa) for the full College Match scholarship: Brown, Carleton, Grinnell, Pomona*, Princeton, Swarthmore, Tufts, University of Chicago, Washington & Lee, and Yale**.

The following partner colleges will consider undocumented students (i.e. students who live in the U.S. and do not have a current visa) for the full College Match scholarship: Brown, Grinnell, Pomona, Princeton, Swarthmore, University of Chicago, Washington & Lee, Williams, and Yale**.

* Pomona College will only consider international students who are attending high school in the U.S. for the College Match scholarship.

** Please note that these are partial lists and are still being updated. 

The schools that are not listed may still consider international and undocumented students on a case-by-case basis. If there is a school you are very interested in, you may still include them in your rankings list even if they are not listed above. 

Although not all of our partner colleges will consider non-U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents for College Match scholarships, most of our partners will consider all students who apply through the Regular Decision process, regardless of citizenship status. Each year, many QuestBridge applicants who are not U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents gain acceptance and financial aid to our partner colleges via the Regular Decision process.