<p>Most of the full/near-full ride students at my LAC worked just as hard and often harder than full pay students. While I wouldn’t say I worked hard for mine, I kept my GPA/credit load well north of the minimums. </p>
<p>One obvious reason for that is if we didn’t meet those minimums, we could lose those scholarship packages. </p>
<p>Considering the annual tuition of the college and the fact most of us came from families who couldn’t afford paying full-sticker…or anywhere near it, we worked hard to ensure we kept our GPA/credit loads well above the minimum. </p>
<p>The facts of the original story are wrong. If he was a D-1 football player, he either has a full scholarship or no scholarship. The D-1 football scholarships are not, and can’t be, partial. If he got a football scholarship, he’s get no merit, or little merit, as the COA is almost all covered by the football scholarship.</p>
<p>100% of the students at the military academies are on full scholarship. Do you see a huge percentage of them slacking off?</p>
<p>My daughter has 5 scholarships, 3 of which have a minimum GPA to retain. She won’t be slacking off, and if she does, she won’t be returning to the school or her team. We cannot afford the school without the scholarships.</p>
<p>OP, what’s your work ethic like now? And how do you demonstrate it? In my opinion, that’s the best indication of what your work ethic will be like in college. Sure, some kids still mess up, but I don’t think it’s because somebody else is paying–it’s because they get caught up on harmful activities, mostly.</p>
<p>"What my mom took away from this convo was that full-rides at universities sap any of the drive to make yourself useful and succeed, because, “hey, it’s not my money that’s paying for this, I can goof off and there won’t be any financial repercussions”.
-incorrect conclusion, has nothing to do with money. If some are stupid to waste their precious time at college, it does not mean that the next person would be just as stupid. More so, how genius with 4.0/2400 has reached this stage of stupidy looking totally bizzare to me. Something is not adding up in this story. Did not happen to my kid. She was on full tuition Merit, graduated #1 in her HS class. graduated #1 pre-med in her college class. Did not happened to many others that we know. Why to throw away years of hard work and waste your time in UG? I thought that this is for stupid, not for smart. I guess, I was wrong. Of course, it is great to get UG education for free, there is nothing wrong with it, and smart person should not be derailed by the full ride, but rather take advantage of opportunity.</p>
<p>dragonfly, I was looking for a minimum GPA for Presidential scholarship but it was absent. In the past, I could find 2010 state the minimum was 3.0 but now it doesn’t have anything like that except
And my interpretation of that is 2.0 because that is good academic standing.</p>
<p>My kids had full scholarship from me, as long as they maintained minimum 3.0 GPA. Their GPAs were much higher than that because of their own work ethic</p>
<p>My Dad paid for my tuition/room/board. I didn’t say “hey, I don’t have to work hard, it is not my money”. I didn’t want to waste his money, I wanted to learn, and I wanted to end up with a good GPA so I could get a good job.</p>
<p>The person in the original post is not thinking of long term plans.</p>
<p>Personally, I think she’s full of it. What do you think is a better motivator- having a “full ride” from the university that is contingent upon your success (3.x+ GPA) or having a “full ride” from mom and dad who may be sweet talked into continuing to pay (or that you could potentially hide grades from)? </p>
<p>(Note: NOT saying that would happen, just that one is likely a more hard and fast rule than the other)</p>
<p>I had a mostly full ride to my state school (need and merit aid). I managed to get a better GPA in college than hs. Honestly, who was funding my education was not a motivation for me either way. </p>
<p>MOST students at “traditional” 4 year universities do not fund more than a small fraction of their education. Someone else is funding it- school, parents, etc. Obviously, most don’t flunk out. </p>
<p>Getting a full ride can improve academic performance because it reduces the need to work. There may be a work study amount that needs to be covered by the student or family, often around $3k, but otherwise the student can focus on studies w/out some time and energy-consuming menial job.</p>
<p>Some top schools, like Harvard, Yale, Amherst or Williams, give financial aid to those with incomes as high as $150K. </p>
<p>In terms of “strong-arming” your way to financial aid, it is sometimes possible to write a letter of special circumstances. However, that does not consist of saying “without aid I cannot attend.” You can certainly meet with the financial aid office but if the FAFSA (and CSS Profile in some cases) shows that you have a certain EFC, that is often what you will end up with as a cost. Letters of special circumstances are usually about some significant change, such as a parent losing a job, family illness, and other factors that show that the numbers in the FAFSA and Profile are no longer valid.</p>
<p>I’ve never fully bought into the “skin in the game” idea, either. Personally, I’m much more cavalier with my own money than I am with money somebody else has entrusted to me.</p>
<p>When I was on a full scholarship, I felt the same way as some peple above. I thought I couldn’t mess up because I didn’t want to let down those who believed in me. </p>
<p>Thank you for the info, compmom. I’ll discuss that further with my counselor. I do have a family illness that will, in the future, require immense expenditures (Cowden’s syndrome), but nothing right now that’ll change my EFC.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that your mom chooses to blame this boy’s poor performance on the scholarship. To me it seems far far more likely that the demands of the football program were too much for him, and that he was lacking maturity. And it wasn’t the scholarship introducing him to the “wrong sorts of friends” or taking up a lot of time and energy, thus making it more difficult to get good grades. Something doesn’t even seem right about that story. A kid with 4.0/2400 doesn’t need to play football to get a full ride scholarship.</p>
<p>If your parents think unless they raid their retirement account to pay for a college they can’t afford that you will crash and burn in college, I wonder why they would want to pay for your education at all. Tell them they need to trust you a little more.</p>
<p>My guess is that colleges are unlikely to care about future expenditures. They don’t care about families that have kids spaced 4 years apart. If the kids are in college at the same time, they hand out aid; if the kids go consecutively, tough luck.</p>
<p>“Using retirement money for anything but retirement is a very bad plan.”
-Except for paying tuition,…unless you want your kids to have few hunders of thousands in loans. While getting full tuition or even higher Merit awards at UG is NOT such a big deal, many are done it, including my own kid. But try to get a Merit at Med. School, it is all different story, even if they say sorry, you deserve it, but we simply do not have enough, nothing will help but deeping into your retirement, which will be gone anyway, since dollar devalues as we speak, so paying tuition is the best that you can use your retirement money while they still have some value. </p>
<p>both of my kids got free rides or near-free-rides. They both graduated Summa Cum Laude. The older son got into every PhD program he applied to. The younger one is now in med school.</p>
<p>My kids are not unique. Frankly, I don’t know of kids like your mom’s friend’s son. The other full-ride kids I know have done fabulously…Hollings Scholars, Goldwater Scholars, Vet school, med school, law school, PhD programs, and fabulous jobs. One I know just won first place in Hollywood for Best Picture at the College Film Festival held there annually. </p>
<p>You need to visit the Bama forum. full ride/near-full-ride kids maintaining high GPAs and doing fab things. </p>