<p>Two-thirds lose their scholarship? Yikes.</p>
<p>As a current Georgia high school junior this worries me. If I stay instate for college, it will be because of the Hope Scholarship. In my high school, most top students stay instate because of the Hope Scholarship. It really is a great program and most students in general take advantage of it. You also need a 3.0 <em>academic</em> unweighted GPA to get the scholarship. I guess we will see what happens. This is the first time I’ve heard about this, but this may eventually become the deciding factor on where I attend college.</p>
<p>That’s what I thought, SS…but you only have to have a B average in high school to qualify for the Hope, according to the NY Times article.</p>
<p>I wonder if now UGA is to accept more OOS?</p>
<p>Two thirds losing their scholarships is a clue to the difference between a “B” average in an average high school and going to a major university.</p>
<p>Yes, I read this article today and thought, “what took them so long?” Hopemobiles?!! Geez, for just a B average. No wonder why the state can’t afford this anymore. </p>
<p>I also read that 2/3 of these students lose their scholarships because they can’t keep up the grades. So, it must not have been that important.</p>
<p>seems like the first mistake was setting the GPA bar too low to begin with. but it seems that HOPE students also have to maintain a 3.0 throughout undergrad to keep the scholarship…? </p>
<p>does georgia have a history of electing republican governors?</p>
<p>They should have raised the bar a long time ago. Hopefully I won’t have to go to an instate school and worry about this. It is a great program; I wouldn’t have been able to do dual-enrollment without it.</p>
<p>^ Georgia had been electing Democratic governors for decades until Sonny Perdue came into office in 2003.</p>
<p>It appears to be a middle-class entitlement. If kids lose it because they can’t maintain their grades, parents really can’t blame the legislature. I agree with other posters on the low bar set for this generous entitlement.</p>
<p>I’m currently attending a georgia HS, and it is about damn time they raised that bar. A 3.0? Seriously? You have to be be mentally disabled to not get B’s in non-advanced classes. I frankly can’t believe the program sustained itself for this long by only requiring a 3.0. Anything other than a 3.3 UW academic GPA (electives don’t count) with some sort of requirement for taking at least some advanced classes is just a pitifully low threshold to recieve state scholarships.</p>
<p>Yeah, we have to maintain a 3.0. Unfortunately this is difficult at schools like Georgia Tech (I hear that even here almost half lose it, but it’s less important because it’s only paying a small chunk here, but every bit helps with 50K+ tuition). Either I will have graduated by time it gets the axe. If that is not the case, the fin. aid will probably compensate (I’m on Emory Advantage Loan Replacement 
)</p>
<p>I attended a high school in Savannah (lots of poor people in the public high school system) and I kind of realize that the odds are against many of these students. I am kind of one of these lower income students that beat the odds because I had a more supportive family and when I did well, the profs. would push me even more. However, knowing many of my peers’ background, I know it isn’t easy for many to achieve 3.0s. It has nothing to do with mental ability. I’ve been in honors/gifted classes since elementary school, thus I can’t make a fair judgment of how hard it is academically for these students. I just know their situations don’t make it too much easier.</p>
<p>HOPE has created one of the most profound social changes in the state’s history. Before 1993, many of the top students in Georgia would leave the state and go to college elsewhere, settle down, and raise their kids as residents of their new state. For the last generation, they’ve not only stayed in Georgia and had bright kids in Georgia, but the state has drawn the best and brightest from other border states whose parents have moved to Georgia so that their kids could graduate from HS HOPE-eligible. The right move would be to raise the bar before they reduce the benefits to a point that undoes the long-term advantage to the state. Unfortunately, that would serve to make fewer voters happy, and for the incumbent politicians it’s all about currying favor with voters.</p>
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<p>Realize that if exactly half lose it, the average campus GPA is exactly 3.0 (which by definition is supposed to be “above average”).</p>
<p>I wish HOPE had been means tested from the beginning. A huge percentage of students at UGA and GA Tech, who use HOPE, would go to college regardless. With the inception of the HOPE, many families stopped saving for college and planning, but this is different than saying their kids couldn’t go without it. </p>
<p>It has certainly improved the caliber of student at UGA, but Tech has always been sort of a self selecting school, that I am not sure much has really changed there. </p>
<p>GA in-state tuition is fairly reasonable, I think about 8 thousand with about 1 thousand in fees for the both semesters TOTAL. HOPE no longer covers most fees. Now that UGA’s rankings have risen and the economy has slowed, many of the same top students that go to UGA will continue to go.<br>
However, I work with really poor kids who need the HOPE, pell grants and a loan to be able to go to a state university in GA. </p>
<p>This is where GA is really benefiting, if these types of kids go to school and finish. Giving the HOPE to kids whose parents say if you take the HOPE we will buy you a new car, isn’t necessarily effecting long term change, though the car dealers appreciate it.</p>
<p>“However, I work with really poor kids who need the HOPE, pell grants and a loan to be able to go to a state university in GA.”</p>
<p>Many of those poor kids may get help in the form of financial aid. Its seems however, that the beneficiaries of HOPE are mostly the middle class. IMO, the state would benefit more by the legislature keeping tuition low. I’m afraid the NC university system is making a mistake by hiking tuition every semester. I</p>
<p>Whether politicians admit it or not, one of the main purposes of HOPE is to keep motivated, talented students in Georgia. If the legislature implements some form of means-testing, it will obviously cut down on the number of people staying in Georgia universities. For me, the choice was between T20 schools, UGA, and Georgia Tech – without HOPE, the latter two wouldn’t have even been in the running. I know hundreds of other students who felt the same way and ultimately chose to stay instate because of HOPE. </p>
<p>HOPE is ostensibly a merit-based scholarship. This idea that every student in the state of Georgia should receive free tuition is absurd. If the legislature raises the GPA requirement and implements a minimum SAT/ACT requirement, then the brightest students in Georgia – those for whom HOPE is designed to pay tuition – should be capable of meeting the new requirements. </p>
<p>IMO the best way to keep HOPE solvent and continue incentivizing academic success is to change the GPA requirement to 3.3. This way, legislators and educators can continue promoting a simple slogan: “Tuition is free with a B+ average”. I think we’re also at the point where the legislature needs to implement a standardized testing requirement.</p>
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<p>If we want to make this a blame game, it was a Democrat (Zell Miller) who implemented the program with a 3.0. Not that it makes any difference - Governors D or R are afraid of touching HOPE (the third wheel of Georgia politics).</p>
<p>HOPE WAS means based when it began. Then there was so much money that they removed that requirement. Unfortunately, many of the public schools in Georgia have watered down the curricula so much so that anyone can receive a “B” average. In the school district we are in, by policy 50% of each marking period grade must come from homework grades.</p>
<p>There are many stories in the news at graduation time of students who can’t graduate because they can’t pass the state mandated graduation tests (which generously are at about an 8th grade level), but the students have a 3.+ average and would get the HOPE scholarship if they could graduate. Really? No one sees a disconnect here?</p>
<p>Years ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did a series on the high schools and the nunmber of the students losing HOPE each year. The AJC analyzed and compared high school graduation test scores, AP test scores, SAT/ACT test scores. Most of the students losing HOPE came from schools where the scores were abysmal. The students aren’t really prepared for a college curriculum, but because they had a 3.00 in high school they believe they are.</p>
<p>Why set a GPA minimum in the first place? That’s a fixed, and game-able, number. Instead, award it based on some other standardized test criteria, with the minimum qualifying number varying from year to year based on the amount of money available from the unethical-because-we-say-so-except-when-government-does-it lottery system.</p>
<p>This is interesting as TN modeled their HOPE scholarship after GA’s (and your lottery directory moved from GA to TN when the lottery arrived here in 2004.) Our criteria are a 21 ACT & 3.0 weighted GPA. There are $1000 additional scholarships based on merit (3.75 GPA and a 29+ on the ACT) and $1500 for financial need (parents AGI under $36,000.)</p>
<p>Seems to me this might be a good way to approach things. Add the testing component, add tiered additional money to capture the high achieving students & help the kids who financially need it most as well. Very little political fallout.</p>