What exactly are college scholarships and tuition?

To answer you question directly, Brandon, tuition is the cost that a college charges for an admitted student to take classes at that College. But there are several additional costs to go to college in addition to tuition. Books and laboratory fees are tow such additional costs. If you attend college far from your home, then there are costs for housing rental and for your meals, called room and board. If you commute or own a car, there are gasoline costs and parking fees. Also there are your miscellaneous living expenses such as clothing and (occasional?) entertainment. Thus, depending upon where you attend college, tuition, alone, may only represent only about half of your total college costs.

Note that tuition costs are generally the lowest if you attend a public state university or state college in the state where you LIVE. Out-of-state public universities and private colleges (both in-state and out-of-state) usually have higher tuition costs. One way to minimize your tuition costs is to attend the first two years at a local community college and then transfer as a Junior to a 4-year college. If you go this route, be sure to work with a college counselor to be sure that the community college classes that you take will be accepted by the 4-year college you intend to transfer to.

SCHOLARSHIPS
These are grants of money to an individual student to cover some (partial scholarships) or nearly all (full scholarships) of the student's college expenses. Scholarships may be granted directly from the college you apply to, but are also available from private (non-college) sources. You generally must apply for scholarships separately from your colleges applications, since there is additional paperwork involved. There are thousands of private-source scholarships potentially available and your high school counselor can give you some suggestions and references for pursuing them

Hi Brendan!

Tuition is, in the easiest way of thinking, what a school charges its students for attending school and learning from its instructors. Some colleges receive direct funding from the state government and are able to charge less money in tuition (these are called public schools), whereas other colleges (private schools) don't receive direct funding from the state legislature and have to charge more in tuition.

When you go to a college's website you'll see that they list a number for tuition, and that sometimes it's rather large. Scholarships (among other types of financial aid) help bring down the tuition number. For example, suppose one semester of college is $8,000 and a student has a scholarship for $5,000. Because of that scholarship, they only have to pay $3,000 (instead of the full $8,000).