<p>I did very well my junior and sophomore years in high school, but now as a junior I'm in the C+ and B- range for honors chemistry and honors pre calculus. I expect to do very well my senior year with the exception of some ugly marks in AP Calc. I'm still in the top 10% (barely, unweighted GPA of 3.6 weighted around 3.9) of my class and have taken all honors and AP. I'm not so much worried about what a C will do to my admissions chances at any particular schools because my SAT and ACT scores are high, but I am worried about what it will do for my chances at grants and scholarships. How much will a C come back to haunt me at moderately selective universities like Ohio State, Saint Louis, or Baylor in terms of financial aid? Thanks.</p>
<p>Need based is based on… need: the the lower income/assets your family has, the more money you could be given. Merit based, well, probably you’ll have no chance. There are kids with perfect or almost perfect GPA and killing standardized test scores to go with it. I am not sure about Ohio or SLU, but I am sure Baylor has its share of those kids.</p>
<p>I’m not talking full ride or anything. Surely you’re aware that most people do not pay the sticker price tuition at a given college. For example, I know someone who received full tuition at Ohio State simply for having a 30 on their ACT and having a 4.0 GPA. I was wondering how much a C detracts from an ACT score in the 30s when it comes to institutional grants.</p>
<p>I am curious enough to look it up for you at Ohio State:</p>
<p>Maximus: $3,500/ year. Rank top 3%; ACT 32 or higher
Provost: $3,00/year. Rank top 10%; ACT 29 or higher
Trustees: $1,800/year/ Rank top 20%; ACT 28 or higher
NMF: $1000-$2000</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“Merit-based scholarships - The Ohio State University”>Merit-based scholarships - The Ohio State University]Scholarships[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Thank you. I guess it really comes down to one’s overall GPA instead of isolated marks, which may or may not be a good thing for me.</p>
<p>St. Louis offered my daughter a good merit award (I think it was $14K), and she had several Cs (at a very rigorous school noted for its grade deflation). It is a relatively high cost school, though.</p>
<p>Most merit awards heavily count test scores. There may be a minimum GPA stated, but usually that is flexible, at least in our case, it was. But some schools insist on using the guidance counselor reported gpa or class rank and will not budge from it, which is a disadvantage to those kids going to rigorous schools that do not weight the gpas and refuse to rank.</p>
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<p>In our experience, at least one of those schools does make exceptions, even though they say officially that they won’t. Never hurts to try.</p>
<p>I agree, Annasdad. </p>
<p>Unless a school specifies that the awards are automatically given to all who have those stats as they show them, they may be the bottom line for what you have to have to be considered for an award, in which case, other factors may come into play and also if you are towards the bottom of the requirements, you may not get anything depending on the number of awards given out.</p>
<p>It all comes back to the specific institution to which you are applying and ultimately accepted. Sometimes the merit aid is more opaque at certain institution and you may not even know why you did or did not get those offers. (Could be grades, could be other aspects of your profile–e.g., URM, your particular religion that meshes with theirs, etc.)</p>