<p>Title says it all.</p>
Son got a letter today with $8000/year renewable scholarship! VCUArts, OOS.
Son received award of Deans’ Scholarship. Although his stats put him at the Provost level. We have contacted the Scholarship Coordinator to see if this can be fixed. Our problem is that our school district only weights AP classes by 6% and Honors by 3%. So it is IMPOSSIBLE to get GPAs in the 4.6 range that they say are average tor the winners.
And schools say they know this and take it into account, but that obviously wasn’t the case for us.
And compound that by VCU limiting their scholarships to In State tuition amounts. Example, the Deans’ Scholarship is worth 1/2 tuition, but only if you are in state. For OOS students it is only worth $6500/year (or about 22% of tuition).
The averages are just that, averages. It doesn’t mean just because an applicant has that GPA and test score that they are guaranteed a scholarship.
I understand that. But I refused to not question it. I certainly don’t want my son penalized because our school district only weights AP courses by 6%, while many schools in Virginia add a full point for an AP class. So an A in an AP class is only worth 4.24 for him instead of a 5.
And for scholarships that require no additional application or essays, I think it is safe to say that Weighted GPA and SAT/ACT scores are the primary factors in determining the scholarship levels.
GPA doesn’t determine anything just for this reason…they vary from school to school. However, since everyone wants to know a number, colleges tell us the numbers they have which are just averages. For the scholarships that require not additional information they use the information on the application (grades, rigor, test scores, extra curriculars, essays, etc).