Hi, my son had thought he’d made his college decision but has recently been introduced to UTD and prefers their UTeach program to the Physics education program at his original choice (not to mention that starting salary for teachers is higher in Dallas which neither of us had realized.) However, due to financial considerations that are too recent to be reflected in our FAFSA, he is very much dependent on merit aid. His current package will cover tuition and housing so he would need the AES Honors for a comparable cost of attendance. The AES chart only offers test score averages and the McDermott site only offers minimum requirements so I’m hoping someone familiar with the process would know if AES Honors is reasonable for his stats. Or McDermott - though that of course is more of a wow, wouldn’t that be an awesome lottery ticket more than anything 
GPA - 4.0 UW, 4.8 W
CR - 3/352
SAT (new) - 1550
School Activities
National Honors Society
Mu Alpha Theta - secretary Senior Year
Junior Student Alliance - founding member and secretary Junior year
Athletics
Varsity Cross Country (regional finalist all four years, state finalist Junior year)
Varsity Track (Conference Champion 3200 Junior Year, regional finalist)
Heavily involved in local road racing
Volunteer Work
Assistant Coach (distance) Youth Track and Field Team - 3 seasons
Church Pianist - throughout high school
Misc
Theatre Bravo - lead actor (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie)
featured actor (Into the Woods, Movie Review)
Thank you for any guidance! We hadn’t really ever even heard of this school until he got a mailer regarding McDermott but the more we research, the more appealing it is if we can make the numbers work.
Good chance at AES Honors. For McDermott, it’s a crapshoot among the elite applicants.
UTD has new guideline for McDermott http://www.utdallas.edu/mcdermott/award-qualifications
First-time college freshman
Old-Style two-part SAT = 1450+
OR New-style two-part SAT = 1490+
OR ACT = 33+
Top 5%
Leadership
Community service
Broad interests
Social skills with peers
Interacts easily with adults
Minimum Qualifications
1450 or higher on the old-style two-part SAT (verbal and math) or
1490 or higher on the new-style two-part SAT (verbal and math) or
33 or higher on the ACT
First-time college freshman
AP, IB, CLEP, and Dual-Credit acceptable
Current UT Dallas students or Transfer students not eligible
He was named a McDermott finalist. Because of his admission date, we haven’t actually heard back on AES yet.
Congratulations @delilahxc for your DS! Are you in Texas or elsewhere? Since he has been named a finalist - he and you will get a trip to the campus for the interview weekend - at least that is how it worked in the past. If he is a decent interviewer, he will do well. They may ask him at the end of the weekend " on a scale of 1 to 5, if offered the McDermott scholarship, how likely are you to accept?" Be ready for it!
We are in Florida.
He wouldn’t have any problem answering that question at all. UTD is absolutely his first choice.
Typically, he interviews very well. Honestly, I feel better about those than I did about his essays although I found those very difficult to judge based on their brevity. He’s one of those IB kids who is typically paranoid about going over word limits on writing assignments so the 1000 character limit was a very unique challenge.
We are both very excited about scholars weekend. I had very much played down his chances and focused on emphasizing the need for AES honors so when we got the email, the whole house kind of lost it 