At Rutgers engineering school have to maintain a 3.25 GPA (STEM majors) to keep the $16,000 scholarship every year…and in the liberal arts school you need to maintain a 3.5 GPA which will be very stressful.
D17 at Temple had to maintain a 3.2, but only for the first 2 years. Somehow she thinks she needs to maintain it for all 4 years, which is fine by me 
Looking at schools for my junior now. Freshman in college got a generous merit at another state flagship. The point of the post is a bit of a heads up, the effort and stress to maintain a scholarship has the potential to really make an impact. Either on students and parents mental and financial health. My college freshman is very bright and could have gone to a top tier private school to the tune of $75 k (we pay half that now). I have asked about the stress level of him now, friends now, and asked if his stress would be higher had he needed to maintain a high gpa to maintain merit or had we been paying double. Absolutely! College should be a great learning experience. Academically, socially, mentally, emotionally. Learning balance is also key
The gpa is important, but there are a few other things that can happen to make a student lose that scholarship. Many require the student be a full time student, so dropping a class and dropping to 11 credits can also be an issue; I know a few kids who lost their Bright Futures scholarship for that reason, or taking a remedial class or a non-conforming class.
I do know someone from UVM who did lose the scholarship in the later years (jr? sr?) because of some medical issues and falling behind. It’s a large scholarship to lose, and her parent felt there was no choice but to pay the lost scholarship amount rather than transfer. The tuition is high, the merit scholarships are larger, but if you lose it you are paying that big tuition OOP In my family, it would not have been possible to pay that $15-18k, and my child would have had to transfer.
My own kids knew that if they lost their merit scholarships, it was likely they’d have to transfer to a cheaper school. One had a large merit scholarship the required a 2.8 and a smaller one that required a 3.0. She had no problems (and she wasn’t a super high performer but was a hard worker). I figured if she didn’t get a 2.8 that maybe engineering wasn’t her thing. It all worked out, so I think taking the risk was worth it.
My other daughter had a much smaller merit award and she did receive a notice that she’d fallen below the 3.0 (to like a 2.95). She appealed, was granted another chance, and we picked her classes VERY carefully for the probation semester. She switched majors and rarely got another B; she was just a slow starter in college.
Seeing this late. I think you are right that a 3.0 for Engineering is often a lot harder than for many other majors. Not always a fair thing for those type majors that are often harder for many (of course not all) than some other majors. Thanks for posting.
I realize that this is an old thread but the merit aid bait-and-switch is not unique to UVM and is not as simple as some contributors to this thread imagine. At least for STEM majors, there is usually at least one full year 4 credit hour required course that is graded on a Normal Bell Curve. Consequently, most students receive a C grade, and test scores that indicate proficiency in the subject matter can be pulled down, e.g., 90% correct is a C if most students scored 90% correct. The existence of such classes guarantees that many, perhaps most, students will lose their merit awards because the only way to maintain a high GPA is to consistently score significantly higher than most of your classmates.
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