Hello! I’m a sophomore in high school, but I would like to know what actual winners of full ride scholarships typically have as their GPA and their accomplishments in extracurriculars and/or service.
I’m a resident of California looking for a full scholarship to any UC, but I especially am wishing for Berkley and Southern California. With my accomplishments thus far listen below, I was wondering if anyone thinks I actually have a chance at a full ride by the looks so far of this-- or tuition being paid in full or half when I go to college.
Sophomore Classes / Grade 1st Semester
- Chemistry Honors / A-
- Spanish II Honors / A
- American Lit. Honors / A
- AP AB Calculus / A
- AP US History / A
- Speech and Debate / P (pass or fail)
- 20 Service Hours
Extracurricular's
- MTAC Branch Honors 2014 and 2015 [Piano]
- MTAC Certificate of Merit State Convention 2014 and 2015 [Piano]
- (Paid) Piano Teacher (1.5 years thus far)
- (Paid) Website Designer for the Athena Medical Group
- Officer of the Creative Writing Club
- Editor of The Muse, literary magazine of my HS
- Stanford Circle Advanced Student
- San Jose State University, Teen Writing Institute Student
[GPA] First Semester of Sophomore Year
Academic: 4.783
[GPA] Overall
Academic Cum. GPA: 4.494
Total Cum. GPA: 4.467
I also wanted to emphasize this:
I want to do whatever it takes, regardless of health and nonexistent social life, to save as much money as possible in college due to my family financial and health situation. Keeping this in mind, I know I obviously can do better by not getting an A- and taking more AP and honors classes. However, more summer programs seem iffy if that’s going to be recommended, especially if it costs money.
Otherwise, what do you think (or know from experience) it takes to obtain a full scholarship?
Thank you very much for your time.
Check into this thread periodically. It is updated regularly. And yes, if you have the grades and test scores listed, you get the scholarships. http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
Thank you for sharing the link. 
UCs do not give full ride scholarships. They give need based aid almost entirely. The exception is those who get Regents scholarships which are usually 2 to 10k per year. However if you are low income/assets, you can get very good need based aid but there will be around 5 or 6k of student loans each year.
There is no UC called ‘southern california’. Are you meaning USC which is not part of the UC system? USC also doesn’t give full rides I don’t believe, but they do give need aid and they give full and half tuition scholarships. Read the USC forum for threads with stats of accepted students, they share.
Study for the PSAT and SAT. NMFs can get full rides or close at a lot of colleges, not in California except for USC’s 1/2 tuition scholarship. You can probably find a lot of scholarship money as well if you keep up the stellar academic record so far. Good luck!
The best merit scholarship that I know of for a UC is the full tuition Stamps scholarship to UCLA. They award 5 in-state and 5 OOS per year.
USC also has Stamps and other full tuition scholarships.
http://www.stampsfoundation.org/partners/
Long Beach State has a competitive full ride for in-state national merit finalists.
Please note that many people say ‘full ride’ and they mean full tuition; other costs such as room and board, books, travel, incidentals are not included. Most people who have true full rides, everything paid, are usually athletes in the 6 sports that award such things or have combined 2 or more merit scholarships to cover everything.
I just don’t want you to be surprised if you are lucky enough to get a ‘full ride’ and then find out you still need $15k to attend school.
Thanks to all of you for the information and suggestions!
Son has full ride to UGA (Georgia). Foundation Fellow…Stamps sponsored. Many schools have true “full ride” scholarships, but they are very competitive. My son was NMF, which gives huge scholarships at many schools. Definitely study over the summer for PSAT junior year. It’s in Oct. your grades are fine, EC’s look good. Need more leadership and way more volunteer work. Just basing this on son’s experience and the various scholarships he was offered. Don’t worry about the “summer” programs for fees, my son never did any of those.
BTW, if your family is poor, you could get essentially a full-ride (or close to it) at the elite privates (and some publics) that meet full-need or are generous to poor students (you may have a gap, but those generally can be covered by loans since most of those schools have no-loan fin aid policies for poor students).
They’re generally tough to get in to, though.
To the OP. The stats for these very competitive scholarships vary from school to school, and from year to year. The strength of those applying for the scholarships also varies.
For example, my daughter got a very generous scholarship from one college in 2006 that she would not come close to qualifying for now.
I don’t think hearing current stats is going to help you as much as hearing that your SAT or ACT score needs to be as tippy top as possible, and so does your GPA.