I was admitted CSE in November. I was really hoping for help with OOS tuition and thought I’d get some kind of merit scholarship. Stats: 32 ACT (34 math), 4.26 GPA, 5 AP classes, top 10%. I emailed admissions 2/27 and was told most scholarship offers had gone out already. Any insights appreciated!
What school are you talking about? I think it is true that most merit money has been awarded already for accepted students.
In March, difficult. You should have been pursuing them actively in the fall.
Some schools don’t require you to “pursue” it, they decide who to award it to when they admit students to sweeten the offer for students they want the most. OP, can you please spell out the school name?
What college? Some colleges don’t have merit scholarships.
My bad…University of Minnesota. They said scholarships given out until end of March based on application. I did take extra steps to pursue scholarships at other colleges but UMN said no need.
So if we look at the avg College of Science and Eng student::
http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/academics/profile.html
Now a 32 is awesome and is in the 95% nationally…but at UMinn
we see that the average ACT is 31.2 and you have 32. Now the strategy for getting merit scholarship is generally to make sure you are at least at the 75%.
I live in MN, and agree that your stats are not top end for CSE at U of MN-TC. I guess you can hold out a small amount of hope, but it doesn’t sound like any will be forthcoming. The good news is that cost of attendance for an OOS student isn’t too bad at U of MN compared to other public universities. Hopefully you can still afford it.
Good point. I thought being in top 10% of class would qualify me for one of the oos scholarship but perhaps not.
You generally need to be in the top 25% of admitted students at the college, Your high school rank is irrelevant.
This is what I was referring to:
National Scholarship Gold National: Covers the full difference between resident and non-resident tuition rates each year for 4 years
National Excellence: Covers 50 percent of the difference between resident and non-resident tuition rates each year for 4 years
Resident of any state, excluding Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin
Top 10% of graduating class
If you are looking for a lot of money, call them, don’t email. Ask specifically when the due dates for scholarships are, and if you have to do anything to qualify.
An email shows a lack of interest. Ask specifically about those scholarships.
I received my scholarship award letter from this school yesterday, although I’m not eligible for the scholarships for non-resident tuition, so maybe they’re taking longer on those? All scholarship letters will be out by the end of March.
Good to know - thanks
On the Umin forum this is a bit of a theme, my kid has been offered nothing, 33 ACT, IBDC, AP scholar with distinction as a junior. You will see people with lower stats posting re CSE, where maybe gender etc or rank differs, who already have scholarships so I don’t know what is most at stake in, say, the OOS waiver. Phone and email contact is unforthcoming.
I just don’t agree that an email shows “lack of interest”. It is a lot easier to frame your question exactly the way you want to ask it in an email. I can’t tell from your post, is that scholarship guaranteed for top 10% of your class? Or is it just one criteria used? Your GC could have made a mistake in your class rank or something on your forms, so if you think it is guaranteed, you certainly should contact them specifically about that.
I appreciate your comment about emails - I’m at school / baseball 10-12 hours M-F I can email from school but I can’t call during admission office hours. The UMN website made it look like top 10% / out of state was a given for a national merit scholarship but now I’m afraid not. A friend at my high school (oos), who has taken exact same classes as me, got a 31 on ACT (mine 32) and slightly higher GPA 4.3 (mine 4.26) got national merit oos scholarship offer of 4k year in January. I don’t get it.
I don’t think Minnesota done yet. My son got a very generous offer two weeks ago.
Do you think it’s O.K. if parents call admissions about scholarships?
I think parents can call, especially since you can’t. This scholarship is pretty much automatic, so they should outline your stats and the scholarship’s, then ask when announcements will be made.