How common is it for financial or merit aid to be unexpectedly taken away?

Paying for College
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<p>I have read several threads on CC now that have a similar theme... At some point, promised aid was no longer available to a student. There is a thread about a school not honoring a scholarship due to clerical error on the school's part, and some posters are questioning whether it is an actual error, or more of a strategy. I have read about merit aid that requires maintaining a certain gpa in certain classes, and then claims of grade deflation , or inability to take the required courses, making that gpa very difficult. </p>

<p>There have been enough threads that describe the situation of unexpectedly lost aid now, that it really makes me wonder how common it is for students to lose aid/scholarships when they didn't expect to (of course they would if they were flunking out, etc... that would be expected). Is it perhaps a more prevalent issue (strategy??) than most believe?</p>

<p>This is certainly something we will be wary of when (hopefully) considering financial aid packages.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it is that common. If you look at the financial aid statistics for a given school you can compare the Freshmen numbers to the All Undergraduates numbers to get an idea. If a school is systematically reducing aid, then you would expect to see worse numbers for All Undergraduates than for Freshmen.</p>

<p>Compare the numbers at a notoriously stingy school like NYU, for instance:</p>

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<p>Both sets of numbers appear equally appalling - there doesn’t appear to be any noticeable downward trend in aid.</p>

<p>It definitely does happen that students fail to make grades required to keep merit scholarships, so be aware of the required GPA/credits/etc.</p>

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<p>BobWallace,</p>

<p>Where did you get the above profile of NYU?</p>

<p>Was it USNWR?</p>

<p>Please advise!</p>

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<p>you can pull up the information from the school’s common data set.</p>

<p>Here is the link to NYU</p>

<p><a href=“Research with Human Subjects”>Research with Human Subjects;

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<p>Many thanks, sybbie 719</p>

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<p>Also you can get a condensed version of the CDS for each school at collegedata:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=436[/url]”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=436&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Note that the info on collegedata is often a cycle behind. (2010-2011 in this case, whereas Sybbie provided the link to 2011-2012 CDS.)</p>

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<p>I am pretty sure every college’s merit awards come with an explanation of the requirements for that award to be renewed. I know, for example, that my daughter was informed that she had to complete 30 credits per academic year with a GPA of 3.2 or higher. </p>

<p>It’s possible, I guess, that a student could lose that merit aid without expecting to if she hadn’t read those conditions when she accepted the scholarship, but that would really be on the student, wouldn’t it?</p>

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<p>Our son’s merit award required him to sign a confirmation form that specified requirements for maintaining the award. I didn’t find it odd an thought it served to protect both the school and son.</p>

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<p>

These sound like a student’s desperate attempt to explain away the loss of a merit award to mom and dad. I’m sure the inability to take a required class would be the basis for a successful appeal. Not sure if I’ve even heard of a merit award that depends on a minimum GPA in specified classes, though.</p>

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<p>If your student does not meet the GPA criteria to keep a merit award, it is VERY common for the school to rescind that award. Some schools will give the award back if the student is able to pull the GPA up after one term, others no.</p>

<p>The school does not usually care why the GPA is lower than the criteria (grade deflation, hard courses, etc.). It is the student’s responsibility to maintain the required GPA which is clearly stated on the merit award in most cases.</p>

<p>I don’t understand why NOT being able to take a required class would matter at ALL. The college computes your GPA based on what you DO take.</p>

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<p>Of course if you have trouble getting required courses it might take you beyond four years, and most merit awards are only good for four years, so you could end up without the scholarship that way.</p>

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<p>There are some complaints that a family received a large amount of aid with 2 kids in college, and then one graduates, and they are surprised that their bill greatly increases. That’s the way the system works.</p>

<p>Many of the horror stories about merit aid involve law schools, where the law schools know that most people receiving merit aid in their first year will never be able to continue to receive merit aid in their 2nd and 3rd years because of the way the grading is structured. As a result, students are faced with much larger loan burdens than they had expected and/or extreme stress trying to stay at the top of their class.</p>

<p>Some colleges had tried to cut down on loans for low income students, and then found they needed to re-institute them during the Great Recession.</p>

<p>I’ve heard of one undergrad university that cut students a little bit of a break if they temporarily fell under the minimum GPA for merit aid in one semester. If the university was convinced you were doing your best, and just had a bad experience in a couple classes, they let you keep your merit aid. </p>

<p>For merit aid, read the fine print. At a competitive university, it is much much more difficult to maintain a 3.4 GPA than a 3.0 GPA.</p>

<p>At my daughter’s college, her merit aid has a built-in backup. To keep the full merit aid, a certain GPA must be maintained, but if you fall to a slightly lower GPA, you still get to receive half of the merit aid.</p>

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<p>As a rule, schools have been pretty good, from what I have seen, in keeping their financial promises. A clerical mistake, a down right error can occur during a lot of phases of the college process from applications to admission all the way to graduation. If a student is truly given an award in error, or offered admission by mistake, it’s really egg on the face of the school, but not something that I think the school has to honor, any more than a bank or company having to honor an erroneous deposit or payment. </p>

<p>Where problems can arise, is when circumstances change. For those schools that do not guarantee to meet full need, it becomes up for grabs as to what the package will be if a student has a sibling enter college, graduate college, or a change in job circumstances. I’ve personally seen some situations where a financial aid package made college affordable, but when Dad lost his job, or Mom’s pay was cut, a sibling is off to college, and the college won’t increase the awards, or only do so in a small amount, not at all commensurate to the EFC change. When the package already has the Direct Loan Maximums, as well other federal money, including work study, there isn’t that much leeway a student has when parents can’t ante up the same amounts as earlier, and the school won’t give anything more out of their coffers. The student’s hours are already being used for WS that’s already incorporated in the aid as well as max loans, sometimes way up there in loans when unsub Direct loans are in the package as well as Perkins and the other subsidized loans. That would not be reflected in the stats, as the school would indeed be giving a package similar, even the same or more than the initial year award; they just are not increasing it even when family need has drastically increased. </p>

<p>But I have not heard of a college just reducing the aid package for students in future years, by that much. They all do tend to do so, somewhat, by increasing the student contribution each year, even the more generous schools, costs do tend to go up and on campus housing for upper classmen tends to be pricier. But then a lot of upper classmen look for off campus arrangement and find cheaper housing and cut food costs drastically, and take personal responsibility for them rather than having mom and dad pay the board. That does mitigate some of the increases.</p>

<p>A question that is important to ask when a student gets a great merit package, is what the financial aid prospects are if the scholarships are lost. At those schools that meet full need, it isn’t such a disaster when that happens, because a needy student could still get need met, though more self help would likely be involved. It can be a disaster when a student loses merit money, has financial need that was met by that scholarship, and the school won’t ante up financial aid because it just doesn’t guarantee full need, and upper classmen new need is not a priority and gets what’s left if anything. Yes, that can happen, and again is not reflected in the stat that clearly.</p>

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<p>

I believe this is pretty common, especially if the failure occurs during freshman year, when colleges understand there is an adjustment process, and/or if the gap is small. My D fell slightly under her required GPA freshman year and was invited to appeal. We were told by other students that these appeals were almost always successful, and indeed, hers succeeded. She just had to explain, with specifics, how she planned to improve.</p>

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<p>The “unexpected” loss of financial or merit aid is usually the result of: a) the student did not keep up the contractual GPA for the merit aid grant but failed to tell the parents in a timely manner, or b) the parents’ financial situation changed for the better but they did not realize they would be required to pay more because of it (i.e. older child graduated, or AGI increased on taxes).</p>

<p>I do think many parents overestimate their child’s ability to get a very high college GPA, even if the child was a high school star. Any merit award contingent upon a GPA higher than 3.0 may well become quite hard to retain consistently, especially if the student is studying a challenging subject with a low average GPA, such as engineering.</p>

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<p>My D has a full ride at our state flagship, but she has to maintain a 3.5. She is very,very smart but this GPA scared me because her major is Chemistry. I struggled as a scholarship student my first year in college, so I know how it can be from personal experience. I advised my D to take first year Chemistry even though she had AP credits. I wanted her to get a nice solid baseline GPA. She wanted to skip straight to second year Chem. We compromised and chose Chem Honors. She found it sufficiently deeper than her high school AP Chemistry class and now has a great 4.0 GPA to build on. With so many AP credits, the kids are jumping right into upper level work right from the start. This makes things doubly hard for some.</p>

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<p>I also worry about students going in with AP credits and then finding the classes more difficult/or being less prepared for them. There is no reason why a student shouldn’t take classes that will give them a SOLID GPA for freshman year.</p>

<p>For scholarships: make sure you understand the requirements of keeping it and know that schools will pull the scholarship if the GPA falls (usually they give you a semester to bring it up).</p>

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<p>For incoming freshman with AP chem credits, my son’s university also recommends not jumping right into sophomore level chemistry classes. Instead, they have a sequence of accelerated chemistry courses for science majors that they recommend be taken by these freshman students - and they can keep the AP credits. </p>

<p>In any case, that university doesn’t give AP credit for the freshman chem labs, which also encourages students to take the accelerated freshman sequence.</p>