“They have a system in place. UofA sat down with us and we examined all the classes…”
@timan2000 My daugther has some Bs, and has also taken more courses than required. How does UofA select the courses to calculate the unweighted GPA. I can’t find that information anywhere. Can you clarify? Thanks.
My daughter is AZ resident and hasn’t applied to ASU/Barrett yet. She received an email on Oct 18 saying that her CBNR award would make her automatically eligible for ASU’s New American University National Scholar award of $16,000 per year (from ASU) + up to $2,000 (for thesis or project funding from Barrett) + $1,000 (toward a Barrett travel program). They didn’t mention GPA or test scores.
That is good news for Arizona residents (no change for them). Thanks.
PS: If you are interested by ASU/Barrett it would be best to apply prior to November 1st.
Yes. The Scholarship you mention has been available for in state and out of state students up until now. But this year they are now suddenly making changes so that it is only for Arizona residents. Out of state students are only eligible for consideration for a merit based scholarship based on GPA/SAT. We are out of state. We are disappointed. We are eagerly awaiting more information about the scholarship details based on GPA/SAT. There is hope yet. We were getting pretty excited about ASU’s new BFA in Animation which looks as good or even better than A&M’s visualization program (where she has also been accepted and has a partial scholarship due to CBNHRP)
I would encourage your daughter to apply to Barrett by Nov 1.
Does anyone know for sure how ASU calculates GPA? My daughter’s school uses a weird scale. If they recalculate grades in a standard scale 90-100 =4.0 for core courses then she has a 4.0. But if they use a different scale then her GPA may be different. If they use + and - for ranges within 90-100 then I am going to have to get out her transcript and do the calculations.
See the 16 units listed under ’ Admission Requirements at a Glance ’ on this page. Those are the classes that count in the GPA.
High School Competency Requirements | University of Arizona Admissions
In each of those categories they take your top graded classes into the calculation. So if she took four science classes over four years, they only put the top THREE graded classes into the GPA calculation, for example. That’s part of why it can take them a few days to review the grades and come up with a GPA, there is human intervention on their end to maximize a student’s result against the Arizona criteria.
Any A-,A, or A+ = 4.0. Also, anything from 90-100=4.0. So depending on your scale
Even if she ends up in the 3.90-3.999 range, it is not a complete loss. What that means is that CBNR total award would be $33,000 ($30,000 + $3000) which still puts tuition at about $5k a year. That amount would get ‘frozen’ since they have ‘guaranteed tuition’ which means they lock it for the four years. Here is the page with the GPA table. Reminder these #s will be increased by an extra $3000 for her National Recognition:
Types of Aid: Incoming First-Year and Transfer Tuition Scholarship Awards | Office of Scholarships & Financial Aid
PS - IF ASU ends up instituting a GPA filter for out of state, they would use this same logic as shown in #1-3 above. Because that is something set by Arizona (the state of Arizona), not ASU or UofA.
If it is this (above) then she is fine.
Her high school does:
100=4.0
99=3.9
98=3.8
97=3.7
96=3.6
95=3.5
and so on…so she has a 95% which is a 3.5 unweighted GPA at her high school. So her transcript shows 3.5 unweighted gpa, 3.9 weighted GPA, and a 95%. But as long as they recalculate it on a normal scale she has a 4.0. She doesn’t have below a 90 in any course.
if everything is 90 or above, then yes, no math needed. 4.0
My daughter had a 91 included in her calculation. Got a 4.0 and the full $38k.
Off topic: Students were in tears speaking at a recent school board meeting begging our school board to reconsider how they calculate GPA because it sounds so low. Students with 2.5 GPA’s filling out scholarship applications having to try to add an explanation of why it is a 2.5 which is actually an 85% average. The school board was trying to reassure students that school profile is attached to transcript explaining the scale/rigor etc. But private scholarships don’t do what colleges do to recalculate GPA’s.
Get a new school board 
I don’t know that there is a remedy now (although you never know), but I would consider going through this thread carefully and documenting what people did back in April. You probably have seen that there was tons of contemporaneous discussion here. Then take all of that info and go back to the counselor who dropped the ball and educate her on what she should have advised your daughter to do so that it doesn’t happen again. Take it to the principal if the counselor stonewalls you.
What I learned through the process is that relying on schools to properly guide kids/families in this area, while a reasonable expectation (I mean, what are educators supposed to be doing?), is dangerous if not foolish. Many/most are woefully ignorant of critical aspects of their job, and if parents aren’t on top of it, then things will fall through and opportunities will be missed. What they are good at are things their state measures them on; otherwise – guiding students to substantial opportunities that they are eligible for – is entirely hit and miss.
For last year’s juniors, CB offered a January PSAT/NMSQT in addition to the October one since COVID disrupted the October sitting for so many. My son’s school only offered the January '21 sitting.
Again, woeful ignorance by bureaucrats.
Great explanations! And it looks more and more that way:
New American University Scholarship – National Scholars | ASU Scholarships for NMS or CBNRP Arizona residents only moving forward?
New American University Scholarship – Resident | ASU Scholarships for Arizona residents with high stats
New American University Scholarship – Nonresident | ASU Scholarships for non-residents with high stats
Regents High Honors Endorsement (RHHE) Scholarship Transfer and Claim Request | ASU Students | ASU for transfers from NAU or UA
If so, then moving forward, non-residents will be eligible only for:
Criteria and amounts are undefined at this point. Hopefully OOS President’s Award will be as good as what OOS National Scholar used to be, but that remains to be seen.
https://scholarships.asu.edu/scholarship/31405
The ASU admissions recruiter also sent us information about this full tuition scholarship for anyone who might be interested. ASU Next Generation Service Corps. Commitment award: ASU ensures that all students in the NGSC have base tuition coverage, so we provide gap funding for whatever amount of tuition students have left after taking into account other university-based scholarships and grants.
It is not CBNRP. But for anyone who had their heart set on ASU, is out of state, and doesn’t have a 4.0, this is a different route.
Daughter got this email yesterday too. Could not find anything on their website about a scholarship for NHRP and the email is worded vaguely enough to support that. I then checked out the scholarships they do offer and I dont think I saw anything over $7k/yr. I didnt spend a lot of time looking, they did not have the best scholarship page user experience I have seen.
This is so frustrating how little the high schools pay attention or help or prepare the students with this award. We did not hear anything about this award from the high school. My daughter received an email and we didn’t know if it was real or a scam because we had never heard of it, and as I recall the email it came from was not college board. So I had to search the web to see what it was all about. Since then the school has still failed to acknowledge recipients of the award and for that matter don’t even seem to realize it was split into 4 categories this year, of which they could potentially have students awarded in 2 for sure, possibly 3 (dont qualify as rural/small town). I feel like this is not very well known or advertised at least here and maybe some students wont be interested in the schools that have the best scholarship opportunities but for others this could be huge. There is a wide range of schools on the list, some I never heard of with full tuition and some with good programs and good scholarships.(see scholarships for Alabama, Mississippi State, maybe ASU, UoSC, U Tulsa, WNMU, U Cinci, a bunch of florida schools, etc) Then there are the schools with the competitive scholarships based on NHRP as well. So, I feel like the high schools are really letting the students down here - even if some of the scholarships have disappeared the last couple years.
I must say that back when my son was in High School, we had never heard of NHRP prior to him getting nominated either, and we had only vaguely heard about NMS. The official position from the school seemed to be that the PSAT did not matter whatsoever and that he was just prep for the SAT.
However, once he got nominated (at the time the process was paper based and it went through the guidance counselor), then the guidance counselor took charge and made sure all the paperwork got properly submitted (only two students got nominated in his school).
Subject SATs was also a topic that was never discussed (even though at the time they were required for top engineering schools). It seems that making sure that the better students would get into the NJ flagship Rutgers, and the others in the local county community college, was the main goal.
I had to look it up. There is more info at Next Generation Service Corps | Public Service Academy | ASU
It seems very interesting but there is an interview process and the program comes with commitments.
Yes it would be a lot to do in addition to Barrett.I guess if someone wanted to do that instead of Barrett? Anyway thought it might of interest to some.