<p>I’m a junior and a straight A Student. I messed up big time freshman year and I’ve been kind of uneasy about where I should apply ever since. I’ve thought about Columbia for a while, but realistically Brown has always been the one Ivy that’s never left my mind. If I got in, well I can’t even imagine it. I’ve realized that my admittance into Brown is highly unlikely (My GPA UW is really low 3.8) but I’m still going to give it a shot. The title’s sort of misleading, I really want to know about Financial Aid. I come from a household where there are 3+ attending colleges. Is it hard to earn merit based scholarships at Brown?</p>
<p>3.8 is by no means low, and Brown looks at upward trends. I got in with a 3.8 flat and others at my school got in with lower.</p>
<p>Brown does not offer merit aid but it offers generous need-based aid. Explain your situation and they’ll help you out.</p>
<p>3+ attending college means, for need-based aid, that your expected family contribution is approximately 1/n what it would be otherwise, where n is the number of people including you attending college. And the approximately is because if your other siblings are in a community college, it will help but only up to the cost of the CC or 1/n, whichever is smaller.</p>
<p>EDIT:
Unless you’re international. Then you decide how much your family can pay, and there’s a relationship between how much your family can pay and the probability that you get in.</p>
<p>“Brown looks at upward trends.”</p>
<p>Says who?</p>
<p>Says a Brown admissions officer I talked to. If you have a bad freshman year and a near-perfect record the rest of the way, that’s very different than getting a consistent smattering of B’s. My frosh, soph years also were not very good but my junior and senior years were excellent.</p>
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<p>All top schools that review holistically are going to prefer an upward trend.</p>
<p>Prefer an upwards trend – yes, they’d rather see an upward trend than a downward one. But these schools, Brown included, have their pick among students who do well all four years of HS and not just the last two or three. If you’ve got something they really want, they will overlook poor grades freshmen year. But in many cases, poor grades in the beginning do work against you.</p>