I was playing around with NPC for university of San Francisco and it asks for GPA. My daughters is almost, but not quite a 4.0 (3.987). I just rounded it up to 4.0 and they showed a 40K scholarship. After actually applying and receiving acceptance + scholarship on Friday it is far lower at -25k. Is the 4.0 a hard cutoff? I reran the NPC and entered the correct GPA and seems that it is, scholarship was 27k or something. Still awaiting financial offer, would they maybe increase the scholarship upon review?
Yes, the cutoff is a hard cutoff. Of course, your D can call & ask the scholarship manager if they can reconsider for her. They will probably say no, but these days there is a lot of competition for top students. It’s worth a try for her to ask.
Want your 4.0 to work. It’s $35k at Arizona leaving a $3k tuition bill.
Have a 3.99….it’s $30k off.
Likely what happened to you at San Fran.
I like schools (and there are many) that publish guaranteed merit outright…u of a is one. The NPCs are estimated, not guaranteed. That said in this case you chose an arbitrary instead of the actual # and that likely did u in.
Certainly, imo, rigor could give the university a reason to reconsider. Some colleges accept the weighted gpa a high school puts on the transcript. Other colleges may recalculate a gpa based on core subjects.
Edited later to add- saw @kelsmom answer below- i defer to her expertise.
I was just speaking more generally, and not specifically about usfca.
The policy is generally not to reconsider. Again, though, it’s worth it for her to ask. She should detail the rigor of her classes. Please be sure that she is the one who asks. It’s okay for her to email, if she’s more comfortable doing that than calling. financialaid@usfca.edu is the general email, but it would be worth it to try to find the person in charge of scholarships, but you’ll have to dig in - it’s not easily found on the website.
out of curiosity - do institutions count an A- as 4.0 - or 3.67? what have you all seen?
D23 is at a school that gives an A-; so that affects the overall GPA of course.
S20 was at a school that graded weird. everyone passed with a 1, 2, 3, or 4 grades. And even a 3.01 would equal an A which would equal a 4.0 on the GPA - so it was confusing!
I think most schools re-grade the students onto their scale. So the college may make an a minus an a.
As for negotiating, some say you can and some say you can’t. My guess would be a lot depends on the level of school - a more known, prestigious school that has more than enough applicants would likely be less likely then a third tier that is struggling financially and cannot afford to lose revenue.
Different schools calculate GPA differently. In the case of the OP’s D, the school calculated the scholarship according to its policies.
My S was just under the GPA requirement for the next-bigger scholarship amount at his top choice school. His acceptance included a scholarship amount. After his first semester senior year grades came in, his GPA actually met the criteria for the larger scholarship. He contacted the school, and they gave him the larger amount. Even then (class of 2010), the school was great about reviewing & updating. Now, schools are scrambling to enroll top students, so it’s quite possible that they might be willing to bend their own rules if they think a student is worth it.
I don’t think that schools do that - at least not any that I know of. That’s why my S asked about getting the larger award, since they don’t look at grades after awarding the initial scholarship scholarship. But it never hurts to ask about a school’s policy, to be on the safe side.
From what I have seen over the years is the scholarship GPA requirements are hard cutoffs (there is no rounding up).
One of the things that you must take into consideration is the fine print
Is the scholarship automatically renewable
Is it renewable for the same amount of money
Is there a GPA requirement or is keeping the scholarship based on satisfactory academic progress (remember being off by .03 could very well lose your D the scholarship).
Seems doubtful. Our D has about the same GPA (and a 1520 SAT) and just got a $27k scholarship from this same school. Schools establish hard cutoffs usually on merit to preserve the sanity of admissions staff - so that they do not get caught up in negotiations on the topic with multiple parents. (Unlike need-based aid, which is given out by Financial Aid Offices, merit aid is awarded by admissions staff at nearly every school. Admissions is so swamped that schools do the best they can to keep them insulated from $ dialogs with parents…). Don’t mean to be discouraging, just trying to give you a reality based answer.
Financial aid would potentially give more money (in grant form) if your EFC (the measure they use for ability to pay) is low enough. But it would not be based on GPA if that makes sense.
In our case, fortunately, she loved University of Arizona when we visited recently, and they gave her basically free tuition. (Your daughter’s GPA will recalculate as 4.0 in Arizona based on their methodology). That gives us a for sure option for regardless of how she does on offers from the various private schools she has applied to. But USF is definitely out of the running for us at this point.
I’m inclined to agree and from reading their site they make a point that the scholarship numbers are non negotiable or something to that effect. Thanks for the reply and best of luck to your daughters search, sounds like she will likely have some great choices.