<p>I am so confused. Admissions counselors at three different universities told my child that if she raised her ACT score from 33 to 34, it would make a huge difference in the amount of scholarship she would receive. She did that, and her guidance counselor says that means she's eligible for $5500 in scholarship per year. One of the universities had offered her $30K per year already and another had offered her $7500 per year. Maybe college admissions know something her guidance counselor doesn't?</p>
<p>For the ACT and SAT, schools that give merit aid have score cutoffs of specific hard dollar amounts dependent on the schools’ merit budget for said year. </p>
<p>And yes, admissions counselors do know things the GCs do not; if nothing else, admissions counselors know the most CURRENT information and policies. It is the difference of hearing from the horse’s mouth versus hearing it from a third party, who may not even know a college’s policy changed a couple years ago. Unless GCs keep up with the policies at every single school each year, their information has a definite chance of being somewhat outdated. </p>
<p>For our kids, we always went with what the college admissions told us, and what they said was invariably the current answer. </p>
<p>However, there are some GCs who know the subtleties at some schools, which the admissions counselor is bound not to tell applicants. But those cases are few and far between and really often only affects very specific schools. </p>
<p>Hope this helps some.</p>
<p>Money…scholarship awards, and the criteria for receiving the are VERY college specific. heck, some colleges don’t give ANY merit aid, no matter what your stats are. </p>
<p>The college folks made the awards your daughter got based on THEIR school’s policy for awarding merit aid.</p>
<p>If you look at the thread above here about automatic full tuition/full ride scholarships, you WILL see that higher ACT scores sometimes make you eligible for higher merit awards.</p>
<p>Money…it appears that your GC was talking about Oklahoma scholarships…is that correct?</p>