<p>Our local HS’s do this and I think that it IS a problem. I talk to parents of younger students all the time and many of them are convinced that their child will be going to college on some huge “scholarship” because the students at the locals schoolsl are awarded so much money. No sour grapes- S was awarded lots of merit money (we don’t qualify for need based and were well aware upfront), but he is attending aschool which does not award merit.</p>
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<p>Except that it does not necessarily correlate withe the quality of education offered. </p>
<p>My HS didn’t but my cousin’s HS did…I feel like it’s misleading because there is a lot of fine print.</p>
<p>My son’s high school does. How accurate it is, I don’t know. First of all, they only report what is reported by kid or parent. Some kids don’t feel like reporting. Also, I don’t know if they verify or not. </p>
<p>My other sons’ school did not. But they did push very hard for info on what schools accepted, waitlisted and turned down the students, asking for the actual letters as they use that info in their “college notebook” for use of future students. Again, incomplete as not everyone will give out the info, but the info they did get tends to be accuarate as they only use verified info.</p>
<p>I have always provided info for my kids as I believe the info is important for future students. I find that looking at some of the info, like if XYZ College offered several kids hefty merit awards, is very, very useful. I have a pretty good idea from looking at old award programs what some of the colleges around here have offered kids. Yeah, one entry, not useful and dubious, but when there
is a pattern over years, it does mean something. The info is supposed to be merit aid only, not financial aid. </p>
<p>On my class’ graduation practice, they placed us in the auditorium. They had us fill out a paper for the Florida government detailing what diploma we were graduating with, where we were going, and what scholarships and grants we had received. </p>
<p>cptofthehouse - I think that information could be very beneficial to future students if there was a database that showed the amount of merit scholarship to specific schools with the students correlated stats. While I understand that scholarships are awarded based on more than just stats (essays, ECs, auditions, interviews, etc.), it would at least show students if they are in the ballpark of what previous recipients were given. For the schools, like Univ. of Alabama, Ole’ Miss, etc. who give guaranteed merit scholarships based upon stats, you of course know what you will qualify, but it would be nice to see something for schools that offer merit scholarship, where it is not guaranteed. That would have been so beneficial to us who are chasing merit scholarships.</p>
<p>Our school uses Naviance, so I think it is so very helpful for future students when previous graduates inform the schools if they were accepted to a school. The students can use that information to see the history of acceptances to schools and compare it to their own stats. Shouldn’t the schools know where their students have applied to, as well as they have enrolled based upon the Guidance Counselors having to send out the final transcripts to the colleges where the students are enrolled?</p>
<p>I do feel the numbers can be very misleading to parents of younger students based upon just a few students who have amassed many, many merits scholarships, especially if the class size is very small. In our school’s case, they did announce the percentage of students who had received scholarships. </p>
<p>And then there are the scholarships like the Gates. While there is a competitive aspect to it (merit), the recipients must also be poor and of certain races. So they are exclusionary. Schools usually like to trumpet these winners. </p>
<p>CTTC, as we searched for scholarships for DD, we found that many merit scholarships had elements of financial need tied to them. It was surprising how many were purely based on merit. In our case DD got ROTC scholarships, which of course are tied to a military service commitment, but also require the recipients to be in good health. I’m sure there are many fine students who happen to have bad cases of asthma, ADHD, allergies, etc. who cannot qualify to serve in the military so they can’t get these high dollars scholarships, either. </p>
<p>I agree that an isolated award here and there doesn’t help at all. But to see a few years worth of programs that show that a number of kids have received a hefty scholarship from XYZ College from your kid’s school is very useful information especially with a good GC who can look at the awards and at the kids getting them and use that info in the future. It’s no surprise that Thomas Val and Linda Sal who are going to Harvard and Princeton respectively got a boat load of awards from colleges, But it’s very very useful information when Joe Average and Sue Middle and other such kids are getting nice awards from certain schools. I like perusing those award programs and have come up with some surprising results Schools that you might just pass over or pick over a like school might be good picks when you notice that they have been very good to grads from the high school that are not the very top of the top and that the amounts are substantial.</p>
<p>It’s very difficult to find big ticket merit awards My one son got an award from nearly every school that had them, but the largest was $5K with many of them $1K. Yes, every bit helps, but really just the difference in COA can make up the difference with those amounts and for us the amounts most of the time did not come close to being make or break deals financially When you start looking at $10K awards which come to $40K over 4 years, now you’re talking.</p>
<p>If I were a GC at a school, I would ask parents to please submit the info confidentially to help future students if they did not want to have the info in a program. At my sons’ school, it’s apparently bragging rights to list the awards, so I don’t think it’s much of an issue as most of the kids did come up with some. Looking at last years list right now in front of me, I am seeing a wealth of info there. I don’t think in the case of my son’s school, that the awards are financial aid awards–those I don’t think should be listed. Could be that some are merit within aid, or aid within merit, but they are named awards that appear to be scholarships Some do not have amounts listed, but some do. You can see how useful that info is, especially in this fairly large group of grads. Take 3-5 years worth of this info and cull through it and you can come up with some nice scholarship ideas. Also listed are community and local awards, some that I am not aware of. I can check them out and see if my son is eligible. Those are not substantial, from what I cans see, but again, if a pattern shows that there is an XYZ Award that ABC High kids seem to get a piece of each year, why not put my student’s hat in the ring for some of that? What possible invasion of privacy is it to share that your child got a $5K merit award from, say ZYX College, the Dean’s Award of $10K from UTS University, and the the TVT Company awarded him a $1500 outside scholarship. It sure might be a reason for me to suggest DS to check out ZYX and UTS, if the kid who got the award last year is similar to my son, and certainly worht while to check out the TVT scholarship apps as well. I just see win/win here. </p>
<p>Fin aid awards are a whole other story and that is something that the GC can privately try to collect only from those willing to share again to help future students. </p>
<p>Not that the GCs at my son’s high school or most any of the high schools I know are making a huge effort or much of any effort to collate this info into useful form and inform the kids and the parents. I’m not exaggerating or bragging in saying that I probably can come up with more generalities about who get what from the colleges accepting and awarding kids from that high school than the GCs there can. Very sad, as I can tell you that this is also a very much above average, actually good college counseling dept here. I really have a LOW opinions of GCs in this area for very good reasons. </p>
<p>It would be useful information if the school lists out the amount from each college. It is totally useless if they just put a total amount there than can be from 10 low match and safety schools. It serves no purpose other than bragging of the high school.</p>
<p>Our old school did this. They only included the amount if the student provided documentation of the scholarship (usually meaning a letter from the college or organization awarding the scholarship). Need-based aid was definitely not included.</p>
<p>I think any info of that sort is useful when one can look at a lot of data points. I wish they would include more rather than just vague info and yes, substantiating is great, but that is often a sticking point. Just a little info is enough to get me on the scent and investigate a bit more. I wish more GCs would be on the ball about these things.</p>
<p>Our old HS asks for scholarship information and a copy of the scholarship letter from the university that you will be attending - avoiding the counting of unaccepted scholarships and need-based grants issue. On honors night those students with scholarships are recognized with name of the scholarship, but not the amount. As noted by others, this gives the Guidance Department some valuable information for future students. </p>
<p>Each year, the school updates several handouts that are sent to rising juniors and seniors and their parents listing schools known for good merit scholarships and listing the criteria for several schools with automatic merit scholarships. Ths school also summarizes in-state tuition, fees and R&B for the most popular state schools. These hand outs will say over the past two years, former students have received merit scholarships ranging from X - Y from for a sample of schools. </p>
<p>My Sons HS did the same thing on the Honors Night, They asked each student to write on a Big Paper their Merit Scholarship Per Yr and which College they got from. Then they run a slide show of it during the Honor Ceremony.
Looks like some students write the Total $$ they getting including the need based and some add up for 4 yrs.
One student mention 65k and that school COA is 43k… Then during graduation the Principal brag about that their students (~550) got ~$16M in Financial aid, I thought that figure was way out of Reality… I think if they really want to post then they should make sure that numbers student reporting are correct and only Merit $$…</p>
<p>Our school has the students bring in copies of their scholarship award letter before they will include them in the total. So at least they have that check and balance. </p>
<p>At the graduation ceremony, our school announced the total amount of scholarship money (do not remember if it included only merit-based, or if thy also included need-base) the graduating class received. It wasn’t outlined on the program or anything.</p>
<p>As a homeschool parent, we certainly don’t have this issue; however, our county public schools do in fact publish the names of scholarships accepted (not offered) along with the students’ names. As a former teacher in the county, I do find it fun to see students whose names I recognize and see how well they are doing. As a homeschool mom, I also use this as a source of information of what scholarships and/or colleges to be on the lookout for. I use it much like I use collegeconfidential. It provides me with ideas of specific scholarships that my kids could look into.Additionally, it provides me with insight about how competitive my homeschool kids will be and what we need to do to become more competitive. </p>
<p>The schools I know that do this don’t seem to brag a whole lot about the awards (well, maybe some) but they do list them on a program for some Honors night or whatever it’s called. I collect those programs and as I said, they are very useful as I can cross check. This schools does not substantiate with actual award letters, but I’ve found very little that is doubtful in there and a whole lot that is very useful. As I said before if one award is just listed in a vacuum, it can mean little, but with all of those students applying to colleges each year, certain awards keep showing up and some are little known ones. Makes for some very nice info on something very hard to find. I just wish the GC would use the info and collate it as an informal source of merit money that kids have reported as some possible sources. If the GCs did that, they would not have to identify the kids at all, but just the info as something to look into. Looks good to me if 10-12 kids bring up the same school with a nice award over the last several years, I sure as heck would check it out wheras a loose single award that shows up, not so useful.</p>
<p>My school does this. They announce it at our Honors Day (where reps from some colleges come to formally present scholarships), and at graduation. It’s a big deal around here - we’re a tiny magnet school that doesn’t get much recognition or attention from the county school system (even though we were ranked 1st in the country at one point…) so it’s nice to see that we’re racking up the scholarships, especially when we exceed the amount of local schools in the system with our significantly smaller graduating class.</p>
<p>My D’s school asked us to supply scholarships just for the school she was attending. They announced these at honors night. However the district next door to us adds up all your merit schoolarships and totals it for the senior class and advertises that their seniors received X amount of money in scholarships and it is a ridiculously high amount. To me that is false advertising you can not accept all that merit aid. </p>