Our daughter made a 32 on the ACT. That is one point below a substantial scholarship to UA. Should I have it re-scored just to make sure there is not a one point difference? This one point equals $24,000 over four years. She has fallen in love with UA and wants very much to go there. But factoring in out of state cost, it is still far more costly than our state school. We are thrilled and thankful with her Merit Scholarship of $19,000 $50.00 hand score fee just to make sure her score is on point. Thoughts? Experiences with this? Thanks in advance.
I feel there may be some other avenues worth exploring. First I did some research about the hand scoring topic and
the feedback is that you should only order the manual review for cases where the score is much lower than expected. The nice thing is that when reviewing the ACT score in this way there’s no risk to lowering the score.
That said I would recommend forgoing the score review and instead having D write an appeal to admissions for greater merit. The appeal doesn’t have to mention the other scholarship at all but instead can focus on areas that may not have been presented in the original application.
Examples:
if there is a competitive lower cost program where your D has been admitted then she could emphasize her preference for UA, but…
Any specific areas such as class rank estimate. My D’s high school doesn’t officially rank, but we found a link to GPA distribution estimates that she included in an email to UMN Admissions right before receiving an additional $5k in annual merit.
A friend’s daughter attends UA and she wrote an appeal to admissions on presenting her strengths and what she could offer the campus community and was awarded additional merit. So I know it’s negotiable.
What’s the deadline for submitting ACT scores? You just missed the late registration deadline for the Feb. 10th test, but you could pay for rushing test scores after the April test date.
@My3Kiddos At UA (Tuscaloosa), “The national December ACT and the national December SAT of the student’s senior year are the last college entrance examination results accepted for students who want scholarship consideration.”
Thank you for your suggestions, ideas and sharing. Your response is very helpful and insightful. My husband and I will “present” and encourage this idea to D. She is motivated. She LOVES UA and really wants to attend. Again, thank you for your insightful response. Have a great day.