<p>Here are my daughters Merit awards for 2008 / 2009
Hofstra - 16 k Per year - keep 3.0 GPA
Saint Rose 14.4K Per year - keep 3.25 GPA
Marist 8 K per year - Keep GPA 2.8 GPA ( wants to go here)
SUNY Oswego 4,400 Per year
SUNY Platsburgh 3,000 Per year
She has good grades and scores but even better extra activities such as earning her Gold award for the Girl scouts which earned her some of her top awards.</p>
<p>**USC is Awesome! **
They added 2 more scholarships to the offer, which means my DD is getting $48K in merit scholarships.
She will be attending USC this fall and she is thrilled beyond belief!</p>
<p>Tuitionsaver – FABULOUS! We have a friend whose D wanted to apply there and were concerned about the cost. I kept telling them there’s scholarship $$ for kids with great stats…</p>
<p>Our final tally:
UMD – Banneker Key four year full ride (sigh)
Maryland Distinguished Scholar $3/yr. (but only if attending instate public or private)
UChicago – $10K/yr. University Scholar
NMF – $2500 one-time
Various science fair awards – $7800
RIT Computing Medal – $3k/yr.
Harvey Mudd – RIF Scholarship $1k</p>
<p>Still waiting on decisions from Northrup Grumman [Northrop</a> Grumman Engineering Scholars](<a href=“http://www.es.northropgrumman.com/community/engscholars/index.html]Northrop”>http://www.es.northropgrumman.com/community/engscholars/index.html)
and FEEA (Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund) [Scholarship</a> Program](<a href=“http://www.feea.org/scholarships.html]Scholarship”>http://www.feea.org/scholarships.html) on merit scholarships. </p>
<p>Congrats to all!</p>
<p>Tuitionsaver: unless I missed it, what are your daughter’s stats?</p>
<p>Also to the group in general, how does one measure weighted GPA? Is it a 5 for a 4 or 5 on an AP test?</p>
<p>Son got $16K from PLU for Provost Scholarship
$15 K from Willamette
$1K from Pepperdine
$0 from UWashington</p>
<p>Is going to PLU</p>
<p>Update; “Honors” at Occidental for 7k x 4 years ( and old news; @21k X 4 years at scu, 11k x 4years at Mills). D turned it all down for Duke…</p>
<p>Oh well… she’s a finalist for a local girl scout scholarship, probably around 1k… yay …</p>
<p>My daughter was offered $20,000 at Kenyon; $17,000 at Grinnell; $12,000 at Whitman; and a summer research grant at Bowdoin. She is filling out the paperwork for Pomona.</p>
<p>D has a 97.7 GPA (top 5%)
1350 SAT/ 2130 with writing (670-M, 680-V, 780-W)
30 ACT (but if superscored 32)
Class President, All State Voice, good leadership EC’s</p>
<p>Merit Awards:
Brandeis- 15,000 Dean’s
GW- 15,000 Presidential Arts
Muhlenberg- 19,000 Dana, Presidential and talent (art, theatre and music)
American- 20,000 Dean’s + 2,000 Music
NYU- 10,000 Talent + 1,000 academic</p>
<p>Will attend NYU for BM–vocal music</p>
<p>She had great options!</p>
<p>I’m attending Ithaca College in the fall for Cinema and Photography.
I was awarded the Park Scholarship (full-ride: tuition, room & board, stipend, laptop)</p>
<p>From my other schools:
6500/year “Non Satis Scire” scholarship at Hampshire College
18000/year at Ursinus College
1000 at Penn State 
& Ithaca initially offered me 7000 ALANA scholarship, 6000 Rod Serling Screenwriting scholarship, and 7000 Leadership scholarship
I was a finalist for both Park and the MLK Scholarship, but Park was the greater award. </p>
<p>Overall, Ithaca was fantastic as far as financial aid, so I chose it over my top choice, Smith College (where I received 30000+ in need based financial aid).</p>
<p>In the future, it would make sense to include the scholarship amount versus expected cost of the education. A $10K/year scholarship at a small private college might sound great till you realize you will still $30K for the first year of your own money and more for following years if the tuition rises (which it most likely will) and the scholarship doesn’t increase, plus if the student takes 5 years rather the 4, the last year is all on you and the tuition/room/board has gone up to say $50K. I’ve known of some families that have sent their children off to expensive schools and then run out of money before the four years was up and the child got a degree from a state U with a far lower ranking for a lot more money than had the child just taken a scholarship from that U in the first place (when scholarship $ was more likely due to freshman status rather than transfer status) and sometimes with extra semesters required as even though coming from a higher ranked school, not all credits transfered.</p>
<p>So scholarship amount is a small part of the overall picture unless it’s a full ride that increases as costs do.</p>
<p>I hoping to talk with tuitionsaver. It is great news about USC. Will your DD be in the honors college? I posted on another thread hoping to touch base about your DD’s stats. Our S will be applying to many of the same schools this fall. His stats are verbal 800, math 700, writing 700. He has great community service, EC and awards. He also has had an accelerated program since 7th grade. </p>
<p>If you see this message, I would appreciate any suggestions or guidance. Thanks.</p>
<p>LIMOMOF2, we put them in slipcases/binders as well. We just don’t have much wall space (very small house, lots of bookcases) and my kids won quite a few awards.</p>
<p>Congrats to DadIIs D! She must be a very special person.</p>
<p>In our HS, the theater awards are given on Thespian Induction night. Athletic awards are given on a night just for them. Band/choir awards are given at the last concert of the year. Senior departmental awards and scholarships from local groups are given during a morning assembly with the whole school watching, and anyone from the community can come. Each group/department can give awards to whomever they want, even if it ends up that someone wins a big number of them. Most of the awards are heavily weighted to the kids who participate in everything and do service work in clubs or the community, and there are usually enough of these kids that you have to have excellent gpa/class rank as well to win. This year, for a change, more boys than girls won awards. Usually it is the other way around.</p>
<p>I think our small (750 students) HS handles this very well – but maybe that is because my kids raked in the cash and departmental honors. I am proud that this year my S won 4 scholarships and 2 departmental awards, math and English.</p>
<p>At our public high school, 10 of 13 NM Finalists were male, 8 out of 11 in top 3% were female. The 3 female NM finalists overlapped with top 3% but only 1 of the males was in both groups. At scholarship night, there were very few male winners and one girl who walked away the big winner in terms of quantity–a girl who had maintained a 4.0 by avoiding the tough courses (schools only recognizes UW GPA’s) but who apparently applied for every single scholarship for which she came close to meeting the criteria. There was some bitterness among other students but I don’t think any of the rest had submitted nearly the number of scholarship applications as she. I know when my S graduated, he said applying for $1,000 organizational scholarships were not worth his time–although I was in disbelief at the time, I now see it must not be an uncommon attitude among boys. There are no academic departmental awards at the HS; the extracurricular awards are handled in venues in which only those who participate attend and so are not well publicized.</p>
<p>
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<p>You should feel good because you’re organized! Actually we chose the two best paper awards from each kid’s senior year, used a middling frame (not the 99 cent kind, but also not a professional treatment), hung them over their beds to stare at after they departed the nest. The slipcase binder is good for all the rest. I recently rescued my H’s from his mother’s attic. </p>
<p>I believe awards are nice to receive. If a school didn’t issue any, or if I had a kid who received no awards, I’d desktop publish something myself, hand it out in front of relatives, have someone snap a picture. The X Family Award for Courage Demonstrated During Senior Year, or something like that. Very “Mr. Rogers” but still..</p>
<p>DadII,</p>
<p>First, my congratulations to you and your daughter.</p>
<p>Sometimes, I do wonder about the guys in my school. We will have our first guy valedictorian in nearly 10 years. He’s a great kid, and he did not find out officially that he had that top spot until today. Graduation is Saturday.</p>
<p>During our academic awards, I, too, observed the low number of guys who were winners. My son pointed out that he was the only guy on the stage when they handed out the English awards. This is the third straight year he has won the honors/AP award for English. Funny thing is, he is a math/science kid! He’s never won a math award, because we do not offer any classes that he can take – he just completed AP stat. But he’s won four science awards. And he’ll be our only NMSF in the fall. </p>
<p>But for all the awards that he has, the one thing that I am most proud of is that he is a wonderful role model for his younger brother, who often hears from the other guys that school really is not all that important.</p>
<p>mystery: </p>
<p>I was the same way about “little” scholarships until I realized that I was probably going to get paid a boat load for an hour’s worth of writing an essay. I finally noticed that receiving $500-$1000 for spending an hour to write a 2 page essay about fill-in-the-blank was by far the best hourly pay I’d ever see. When else is someone going to pay me $250-$500 per page I write? </p>
<p>Now I see “small scholarships” as somewhat of a challenge, and after speaking with some people that awarded them to me I learned that very few people take the time to apply. I bet if you pitched it to your son in a way that he’s getting paid $X for Y hours of work, he might see your side a little more.</p>
<p>Just a thought. -Kristin</p>
<p>Thank you all for your kind words. That was one of the happiest moments. </p>
<p>I guess, by most of the examples given, 14 awards in one night is quite good enough. I was about to talk to the school about a couple awards they missed.</p>
<p>yes, if you count the total award winners, I would say girls definitely win more than 50%.</p>
<p>At our HS you can only win one award no matter how qualified you are. Yeah…everyone’s a winner…everyone should feel good.</p>
<p>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</p>
<p>My son’s a Junior and his class is one of the few where the boys outsmart the girls. He was shutout in the Awards Night for the first time ever this week but the school does not give many awards to underclassmen. The Valedictorian and Salutarian earned 19 awards between them.</p>
<p>At HS Graduation Day, they no longer say the names of every scholarship that the best students get. I assume it is because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings? They only mention local scholarships students earned. We do have Teachers Merit Awards that are given to 12 to 15 students every year. Most of the winners happen to be the children of teachers in the schools. A real surprise there.</p>
<p>will be attending the College of Wooster in the fall as a major in Music Education, and possibly doubling with German. it was easier for me to remember what i got if i went in exact order as my FA package lists it.</p>
<p>Wooster Grant
$31,180 per year</p>
<p>Pell Grant
$2,281</p>
<p>SEOG Grant
$2,200</p>
<p>AC Grant-FY
$750</p>
<p>Ohio Choice Grant
$660</p>
<p>Southeast Music Parents Assoc. Scholarship
$200</p>
<p>HCEF Scholarship
$500</p>
<p>Paul and Esther Haudenschield Music Scholarship
$500</p>
<p>Direct Sub. Loan
$3,500</p>
<p>Work-Study
$1,000</p>