<p>My family’s income is roughly 52,000/yearly?</p>
<p>This equals to no Peil grant and an EFC of about 5k. </p>
<p>My Merit isn’t at the top of the list:</p>
<p>28 ACT
4.6 weighted gpa
3.95 uw gpa </p>
<p>do i have to take out AU because of financials or will i receive enough?</p>
<p>My dad makes about $150,000 a year, my mom doesn’t really work. I got a $10,000 merit scholarship from AU, but they only offered me loans as far as financial aid goes. My parents claim that they cannot afford to pay for AU and they will only pay for an instate public school. Obviously, it seems to me that my parents have other things they would rather buy and a college education is all the same to them, because I’m the one who has to be there, not them. I’m going to try to get in contact with admissions and the financial aid office to see if there’s anything that can be done, because I still really wanna try to go to school at AU.</p>
<p>BTW, you have a high GPA, didn’t you receive any merit aid? If not you could try talking to them, because that’s completely ridiculous if you didn’t receive any merit aid. I have a 3.8 UW and a 4.5 W and they offered it to me.</p>
<p>I’m a potential applicant, I’m only a junior. </p>
<p>I’m trying to make my college list and i need to see the schools i want to go to are too far off financially.</p>
<p>My EFC was around $6k when I first submitted my FAFSA and I got about $45k in financial aid from AU, with about $9k of that as loans. Although American University does not promise to meet 100% of need, they met mine pretty close. (They cost about $52k this year). So, I would definitely apply!</p>
<p>For people with really low income, or very severe circumstances AU (and most private schools) do seem to give out a lot of aid. Apparently AU is not the best school if your looking for a lot of aid and don’t fit into the certain criteria (which most people don’t). I have been told that GWU tends to be good for aid, so you may want to put them of you list of colleges to apply to if you’re looking at DC colleges. If you like AU, apply and see, you never know. It can’t hurt to try.</p>
<p>not sure but if you raise your ACT a bit you should be fine. your GPA is great.
my friend has 30ACT/3.9x UW, 4.3W with like 1000 EFC and he got 52000$ (10k deans scholarship) including loans/needbase/grant</p>
<p>im 2280 SAT/ 3.7x UW, 4.19?W 7000 EFC and i got the presidental scholarship (20k) and 14k grant. so I got 44,000/54,000 including loans
10k a year to pay</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me with similar stats what $ scholarship received or what stats
we need to meet to get $20 K. Jr in high school still have a little time to bring up.
SAT R 730 M 650 W 660 = 2040 3.85 UW 4.25 W (17 AP / Honors by end of HS) Lots
of volunteer, 2 languages. business degree.</p>
<p>AU doesn’t publish criteria for its scholarships, and there are no guaranteed awards for any particular combination of stats. For every person with a particular GPA or SAT score who got a scholarship, you’ll find someone else who didn’t. (My D got a Dean’s scholarship three years ago, when it was $20K–we’re still not sure why). It appears that AU’s merit award process is holistic and takes into account the desireabilty of a particular applicant on a variety of grounds (the “we need a tuba player this year” concept). All you can do is get your stats up as high as possible and hope for the best. I do congratulate you juniors who are making affordability a key factor in your college search–you are smart cookies!</p>
<p>Thanks good advice. When we started to see whom was accepted this year it did not
appear any one magical formula. We can only hope for the best for our children. They are all so hard working and deserving.</p>
<p>See Post #4 in this thread:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/american-university/985427-merit-awards.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/american-university/985427-merit-awards.html</a></p>
<p>This is from 2010 (applies to kids accepted to Class of '15), and things may have changed, but the admissions officer said the merit scholarships are based JUST on “academic strength” and not on holistic factors. (I think they’re intended to bring up the averages on the metrics that get reported by College Board and the like.)</p>
<p>Note that the amounts were lowered quite a bit between Class of '14 and Class of '15–not sure if it’s because they wanted to give out more of the merit scholarships or if they wanted to put more $ towards need-based aid.</p>
<p>Some good points MommaJ. My D just received a $10k Dean’s Scholarship and some loans. By reviewing stats on this and other forums, we see that there are students who had lesser stats but received more merit aid. There is a lot about the process that does not seem to make sense. D has 4.35 W GPA. #4 in her class of 180. 730 on CR SAT. Math was 600, which may have hurt her, but it is the only thing I can think of. She held leadership roles in EC. AU was her #1 choice but will not be going.</p>
<p>If it helps I recieved a $10,000 merit scholarship and I have currently a 4.5 W GPA and a 3.8 UW GPA. I have taken 6 AP courses. I rank 191/970, my school is huge and very competetive within the higher ranks of the class.</p>