<p>I got a letter in the mail today from a place called Southern Arkansas University. It's a public school with about 2800 undergraduates in Magnolia, Arkansas. They told me based on my ACT score, if I have a 3.25 GPA for my senior year, I qualify for the Mulerider Excellence Scholarship. It includes
- Full tuition (students outside of LA/TX/AR have to pay something I believe)
- Full room and board
- $1,000/semester stipend</p>
<p>The award says I have until May 15 to accept, and all I have to do is sign and return the letter to get it. All I have to do to keep the money is maintain a 2.5 GPA. The letter also says to include a picture of myself for use in a news release.</p>
<p>My question is, what kind of school gives out full rides like this? I've never had any contact with the school. I didn't even know it existed! Though I am grateful for the offer, I have already enrolled somewhere else. </p>
<p>Did anyone else get this letter? It seems like a good way for a school wanting to increase its rankings to get top students whose college plans didn't work out at the last minute.</p>
<p>I got a lot of those. In fact, one college sent a full ride offer to every single IB student at my school. It’s a school that wants to boost their SAT / GPA averages. </p>
<p>I’m just throwing out random numbers here… but let’s say that you’re a school with an average SAT of 1000/1600. Based on your statistics, you’ll attract other students that are in the 1000/1600 range. So how do you get your SAT average to 1200/1600? You matriculate people with 1300 SAT scores to slowly raise your average. How do you get people with 1300 SAT scores to apply/enroll? Offer them free money.</p>
<p>thats not fair… :(</p>
<p>My son got a call last night from a in-state school that asked for his GPA, and ACT score. They offered him $11K over the phone. We are not sure how they even got his name but they had our address and phone number. Caller ID had their name on it and I made sure he didn’t tell them anything else in case it was a scam. They said they’re sending offer in the mail.</p>
<p>If the school he plans to go to would offer him $11K, we would be ecstatic. Not happening.</p>
<p>I wonder if this is normal-- in the final weeks before the May1 deadline. Or whether, this year, schools are seeing their yield numbers much lower than previous years, and are scrambling to fill seats in the last couple weeks (and at the same time trying to get their numbers up).</p>
<p>Or, maybe, some of these places have got wind that there are talented folks out there who can’t afford the colleges they got into this year. Just exactly how much time would you have to spend here at CC to learn that? No-name-U is not necessarily the worst place in the world to get your undergrad degree.</p>
<p>happymomof1, I agree completely.</p>
<p>My son got a couple similar offers in the mail. One from Florida and one from Oklahoma. If I remember corrently it was linked to his NMF status, SATs, etc and they offered a full ride + stipend + computer, etc.</p>
<p>He is going to school on a full ride but to a school he applied to and on a scholarship he interviewed for.</p>
<p>The situation I mentioned was many, many years ago in boom economy, so it’s not limited to this year. I can remember Villanova as one of the schools (the only one I would have even considered). </p>
<p>The same thing happens with MBAs. You have an option at the end of the GMAT to submit scores to schools, then they offer scholarships based solely on GMAT score. I had at least a dozen unsolicited full-ride offers within a year of my GMAT, and several schools emailed me for up to 5 years after my score notifying me that I either earned a scholarship, qualified for a scholarship, or was a finalist for a scholarship. Ross (Michigan), and Boston University were two that kept emailing me, I remember Brandeis, Tulane, WUSTL, and Southern Methodist were ones that made full offers.</p>