<p>Yes, engineering majors have a tougher time, in general, keeping that GPA high enough to keep a merit award.</p>
<p>It is important for the majority of kids in my opinion. I have a friend and her son was a A- student in HS with really nice SAT scores. He lost his scholarship after first semester soph year at a match school because he got involved in too much partying (big private school). They let him hold onto the scholarship just long enough so that he would return for soph year (schools don’t want low freshman retention rates IMO). The scholarship went away after the first half of soph year and the parents paid full freight for the other 2.5 years at an expensive private school (they do not qualify for FA, but are upper middle class so this hurt).</p>
<p>I think it is also easy for the B or A student to lose a merit award if they sign up for classes like chem, bio, calc, (ie: premed track) all at once. Many think that they can do well, but many are weed out classes and many students are NOT prepared for those classes. Some students drop a class to retain a high enough GPA, but others do not understand rules about taking Ws and end up with a couple of Cs, Ds or even Fs.</p>
<p>Freshmen just don’t understand how to “do college”. Most do not go to office hours, find a tutor, understand that one can take a W rather than an F or D and still be “okay”, what a reasonable course load would be for them, how to study when a class has just a midterm, final and a paper. This is why I would not want to send my kid to a school that requires a 3.0 to keep an award. At the end of the day, DH and I could have been hit in hard in the wallet and we don’t need that type of bill! Met to add that freshmen don’t necessarily know how to deal with their first experience with less structure in a day either. They have freedom not to go to class, or to study, etc. and nobody is micro-managing.</p>
<p>My D has a merit award that does require a 3.0 freshman year, and I think a 3.3 in her major after that. She isn’t in a major that weeds out according to grades (more personal evaluations, I’d say), and she will mostly be writing papers rather than having tests. We are fortunate - very fortunate - that if she “loses” this scholarship, she can stay at her school; the scholarship is helping her enormously but we have made it very clear to her that we wouldn’t pull her if she is working hard and wants to stay, just can’t quite get the grades. But I know she would be ashamed if that happened. </p>
<p>I can see why they do want some kind of accountability from kids if they are granting them so much money, but I wish it were more holistically based. I guess there’s no perfect answer.</p>
<p>My son got a letter from Hartwick stating that he would be eligible for merit $ based on his SAT scores and GPA (assuming his GPA is what he reported to the College Board). They also enclosed a “priority application” – free, no essay, no recs required, and most of it is already filled in. Definitely a temptation for a lazy kid. My son said, “What’s Hartwick?” and I said it was a small college in the Catskills. He said, “I could ski in the Catskills. Okay, I’ll go there.” If only he was so easy-going in any other area of life!</p>
<p>It’s on the “maybe” list for him to apply to – I’m concerned about the low graduation rate – so I don’t know whether it’s better to send in this “priority application” or just wait and apply through the Common App. </p>
<p>Thanks for the advice to find out what GPA is required to keep merit money – that’s good to keep in mind.</p>
<p>I think this is a very valuable discussion on getting and keeping merit awards. I would add that it is important to get a sense of what grading is like at the college and in the major, as some schools and departments are much more lenient than others.</p>
<p>Public stats on % of merit aid retained would be very helpful.</p>
<p>How do you handle looking for a match school with this issue: schools that match his gpa have quite lower SAT scores than he has. Schools that match his SAT score are quite above his gpa.<br>
Also:
yabeyabe2, Thanks for your input. We did add Towson and Salisbury to the list. Now if I can get him to visit both that would be great.
kinderny, Those are new schools for me. I’ll check them out. Thanks.
kathiep, Thanks as well. Those schools I am more familiar with and will have to look at with an eye on computer science.</p>
<p>Itall, schools vary in how they weigh disparate stats. It can also depend on their prior experience with your HS. If you have Naviance info, it can be helpful.</p>
<p>One of my biggest discoveries with my first child was realizing the disparity in how GPA’s are calculated. Schools can weight grade as much as two whole points and some students (or parents) will say that they have a 3.8 GPA, but they mean weighted out of 5. </p>
<p>I very much agree with looking at what the minimum GPA is needed to keep scholarships. My son’s college has NO GPA requirement, which is really nice and should allow him to extend his reach a bit when he gets to choose some electives. In his major most of the students take MORE computer classes as electives instead of humanities. I remember Drexels had a 3.0 minimum, which I thought was a little scary for a very expensive school. </p>
<p>We’ve talked before (maybe on the Jewish B student thread?) about why some schools have low graduation rates. simpkin, you mention that about Hartwick. I think that many students go to Hartwick because they are generous with merit aid and many students treat it as a state college where you can afford to go for 5 or 6 years and that happens by changing majors or re-taking classes. As Northeastmom mentioned, not all students, especially B students, understand how hard it is to get good grades in College vs. HS.</p>
<p>My D who, was a B-ish student (mostly due to her weird h.s. program),is finding it liberating at Hampshire where there are evaluations instead of grades. She is not afraid of bombing on a paper, or limiting the classes she is taking to ones she can excel in but focusing on the topics in which she is interested. If she picks a project that is too difficult she has the opportunity to do it again until she gets it right, or rewrite a paper in a better way to showcase what she has learned in her research on a problem. I had never realized how freeing it would be for her not to be constantly in search of the almighty “A”. (This may all change once she gets her first semester evals, but for now we are counting it a win.)</p>
<p>My son also has the dichotomy of GPA and SAT not matching up. His SATs are not stellar but considering that he believes prep courses are cheating heavens and doing practice tests is cheating as well, they are pretty good. I think he’d be happier at schools with higher SATs because I think that the SATs are a better test of intelligence than GPA’s. Perhaps I am jaded by the overall ridiculousness of grades at our HS. 60%+ of my son’s grade has a 3.5 or better (he doesn’t do HW so his grades are lower, he consistently gets A’s in no HW classes).</p>
<p>He also got the priority app for Hartwick. It offers the three areas he is interested in (physics, poli sci and economics) and has the three year program, which he could do - he already has 15 credits from AP and CLEP and is taking 7 more exams this year. I think he may do the online app. I hope so because he hasn’t even asked for teacher recs or done his guidance packet yet and he has a new GC this year.</p>
<p>My son has gotten so many of these apps but most of them are, IMO, are just attempts to get our money. He won’t get into RPI so why send them $70 to hear it sooner. At least Hartwick is free.</p>
<p>“He won’t get into RPI so why send them $70 to hear it sooner.”</p>
<p>Are you sure? If he did, would it be a good fit? $70 is really nothing compare to $55k, IF you end up “full pay”. </p>
<p>I hung out on the western thread, but there is not much action there. </p>
<p>So son is at his “reach” in engineering. Not much of a reach SAT wise, but for GPA. And later we found perhaps a reach for SAT and AP scores in the school of engineering. </p>
<p>Son just got his first test score, in Chemistry, and he is pretty shaken. Even when I mentioned it was just another “hard thing”, he reminded me it was a whole new world. He knows he didn’t do “his best”. He knows he rarely has ( as others have said; just about six months in maturity behind).</p>
<p>The question is, what will he do NOW?</p>
<p>I still think the school is a good fit, even if the major isn’t.</p>
<p>Engineering is tough Shrinkrap. I’ve known kids who have really struggled their first semester or two but once they found out how to study and allocate their time their grades improved. Plus, Chemistry is just hard. I hope things pick up for your son.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap, I followed your son’s journey last year on the Western thread (and this one) and I’m cheering for him. The worry of a parent never ends, does it? I have a good feeling your son will do just fine in life.</p>
<p>My son wants to study physics but even though several of his teachers have suggested he go in to engineering, he has no interest in it. He also wants to pursue pol sci, economics and history and RPI isn’t really known for its liberal arts and social sciences. He does know a couple of kids there who are engineering and pre-med. They like the school but what they say about doesn’t entice my son.</p>
<p>Although I think RPI is a phenomenal school, I don’t think it’s a good fit for my son due to his diverse interests. This is especially so since I don’t know that I see him sustaining the effort needed to actually be a physics major, as opposed to saying he wants to be a physics major. If it hits the fan, I want him to be able to stay where he started if he likes the school otherwise.</p>
<p>H is trying to steer him towards Stony Brook.</p>
<p>I hear you. We were happy son didn’t choose a poly tech for the same reason, and that he chose a school with a lot of options, in case the first didn’t work out, or didn’t work out at this stage of his life. He made some pretty big changes over the last year. Hard to know where it’s going.</p>