Chances/Merit Scholarships for UT Austin

Colleges and Universities A-Z The University of Texas at Austin
1

<p>Hi, I was wondering if UT Austin would bother giving me any type of scholarship and my chances of getting into Electrical Engineering. I'm a white male if that means anything. Here's my stats:</p>

<p>SAT- 2000</p>

<p>Math- 680
CR- 660
Writing- 660</p>

<p>High School: Fairly competitive</p>

<p>Weighted GPA: 99.487
Class Rank: 20/515</p>

<p>National Merit Commended Student (202 on PSAT)
All Pre-AP and AP classes
5 AP classes
~50-70 hours of community service; various places
Marching and concert band freshman and sophomore years
NHS junior and senior years
Presidential Cabinet for NHS junior and senior years</p>

2

<p>UT is notoriously stingy with merit aid to non football players, is the impression that I, as a life long Texan related to half a dozen UT alumni, have always gotten. I don’t know if that’s urban legend or not; what we hear is that unless you play football they don’t give you much. lol. The difference in the amount of students who get merit aid at a private school which does not have a football team such as Southwestern, just up the road, is shocking. Wonder if there is causation or just correlation there.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/academic/ima/sites/default/files/CDS_UT_Austin2009-10%20(Final).pdf[/url]”>http://www.utexas.edu/academic/ima/sites/default/files/CDS_UT_Austin2009-10%20(Final).pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Go to page 20 of the pdf file. While the need based numbers look pretty good (much of which is going to be federal, not UT) the merit aid looks pretty weak.</p>

<p>Out of 35107 full time undergrads: 1827 received “institutional non need based scholarship or grant aid (exclude those who were awarded athletic awards and tuition benefits)” Without grabbing my calculator, what is that, very roughly - five percent? </p>

<p>They don’t tell us the average dollar amount, for some mysterious reason, but based on data from other areas such as collegedata.com I’d give an educated guess of an average of 3500.</p>

<p>They do count non need based aid (merit) when used to meet needs of student shown to have need, as need based. That’s another 4259, but I don’t know if you can call it merit based aid as it’s possible it was awarded on both need as well as merit.</p>

<p>Here’s the engineering school scholarship page. [Current</a> Scholarships & Fellowships](<a href=“Financial Support”>Financial Support)</p>

<p>There are a lot more general scholarships too. [Texas</a> Scholarships](<a href=“http://www.texasscholarships.org/index.html]Texas”>Scholarships - Texas One Stop - University of Texas at Austin)</p>

<p>The 40 Acres scholarship is pretty generous - you look to be within range but it is a very stringent qualification. [Texas</a> Exes - The 40 Acres Scholarship](<a href=“http://www.40acresscholars.org/scholars.asp]Texas”>http://www.40acresscholars.org/scholars.asp)</p>

<p>I’m guessing the reason the total numbers of students awarded merit scholarships are so low, even with so many scholarships, is that there are just that many more students competing for them. UT is a very selective school - the data for students who entered looks like SMU or Baylor on my spreadsheet and not like most state schools - so it’s not like most of those 35000 students aren’t especially competitive. Most of UT’s students will have ranked at least in the top ten percent of their class.
(76 percent according to data sheet) It’s not like getting into an Ivy but it’s one of the more selective state schools.</p>

3

<p>My son was OOS, so it’s probably different, but his stats were very strong, and he received only a one-time $1,000 engineering merit scholarship (he received NO need-based aid). Actually, he received only $500 so far, and he has to get a 3.5 GPA this semester in order to get the other $500! That will be hard to do, so I’m not counting on the second installment.</p>

4

<p>My son was admitted to EE 4 years ago. He was in the top 3% and his SAT M+V was 1500. He didn’t take the PSAT junior year so he wasn’t eligible for National Merit status. He had few extracurriculars, no volunteer work and refused to join NHS. He received a scholarship worth $18,000 over 4 years as long as he maintained a 3.5 GPA which he did. He says the scholarships given in engineering bascially look at SAT and class rank with maybe a little extra thrown in for National Merit status.</p>

5

<p>Good for your son, phramacistmom! That’s cool. 1500 is an excellent SAT score!</p>

6

<p>Thanks Mainelonghorn! My other son was admitted to EE last year. His M+CR was 1390 and his class rank was 5%. He was in marching band for 3 years, no volunteer work and also refused to join NHS. As expected, he did not receive a scholarship! Maybe the cut off for merit scholarships in engineering is 1400?</p>

7

<p>My son’s score was 1470, and he didn’t get much, but I bet it was because he’s OOS. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t moved to Maine before he was born!</p>

8

<p>Do students have to apply merit-based scholarship? How does it work?</p>

9

<p>Mainelonghorn : Was the $1000 merit scholarship your OOS son received,
sufficient to also entitle you to pay in-state tuition ? Then that is a significant
benefit.</p>

<p>Could you please pass on when he received the scholarship, as an freshman
applicant, or only after enrolling and producing good grades ? Thanks !</p>

10

<p>Based on a conversation I had with a few other engineers last year, it seems that merit scholarships in engineering were based solely on SAT scores, with tiers ranging from $1000 up to $2500 in increments of $500 (n=5). The upper bound may have been higher, but that was the highest I had heard at the table. In any case, I have also heard that many of those scholarships have been cut. With this in mind, Lampe93’s stats do not seem sufficient to qualify him for any merit scholarship from engineering.</p>

<p>@dnarayen, Cockrell confirmed receiving my Engineering Scholarship Application on 1/5/2010, my senior year of high school. That Summer, on 6/21/2010, I was notified of my award.</p>

11

<p>Thanks frever/ hearing back in mid June would be slightly non-optimal, since
then the scholarship (and attendant in-state tuition) could not be factored into
the decision on whether to attend UT or not. The difference between IS and OOS
tuition is quite a lot.</p>

12

<p>I received both my admission and scholarship in January 2010 after I applied in December. It really is mostly based on SAT/ACT scores though.
And frever, I know two current freshmen who are receiving 9000$ a semester from Cockrell, so the upper bound is indeed higher :P</p>

13

<p>agpyn3w; Interesting. May I ask a) Are you in-state (not sure if that
makes a difference b) Why do you think that scholarships are primarily
based on SAT/ACT (in our case, that would be an excellent thing) and
c) Were you alerted on the UT page, via email or via snail mail ?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

14

<p>@agpyn3w, $9000 just from Cockrell??? I know some upper classmen getting 9 g’s but that included 3k from NMF and only 6k from Cockrell despite ~2400 SAT.</p>

<p>@dnarayen, Just to throw some more data into the mix… b) It’s not often that people actually reveal their SAT/scholarship combo, but when they do it has been strongly correlated. Beyond the numbers, it’s pretty much an accepted fact around engineering anyway. c) Email</p>

15

<p>dnarayan, the $1000 scholarship did NOT exempt my son from OOS tuition rates. I read online somewhere that there are a VERY limited number of exemptions - like eight for the entire school.</p>

<p>He was awarded the scholarship not long after he was admitted, in the spring of his senior year. He received $500 his first semester, and had to maintain a 3.5 GPA to get the remainder of the money his second semester.</p>

16

<p>MaineLonghorn; Thanks for your reply. I could have sworn that I did
see that a competitive scholarship award of at least $1000 entitled
the awardee to pay in-state tuition, but today I cannot find anything
that specifically mentions $1000. Maybe that was only on CC,
and not anything official from UT.</p>

<p>Oh well, it is what it is, we’ll see what happens in the next couple months.</p>

<p><<<<<br>
Competitive
Scholarship
Waiver
A limited number of nonresident and
international students who have received a
competitive scholarship. The scholarship
must be administered by a school-recognized
scholarship committee.
Nonresident
portion of tuition.
The student is
responsible for
payment of resident
tuition.
Student’s department
(undergraduate or graduate
student service office) >>>>></p>

17

<p>The word “limited” is the key. It’s VERY limited! I called specifically and asked. The woman was polite but obviously trying not to laugh at me!</p>

18

<p>makes sense, especially since you have direct experience with this.</p>

<p>I put the difference between IS and OOS tuition, for a full load,
at about $20K annually. Am I close, or way off base ?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

19

<p>I think in most cases the scholarship is awarded if you were also accepted into the engineering honor program.</p>

20

<p>dnarayen, the difference was close to $23k this year, at least in engineering.</p>