<p>DS has a full tuition merit scholarship from Michigan which requires a cummulative 3.5 gpa. Before he accepted, he called the scholarship office and asked about the grade point requirement because he really wanted to stretch himself in math and not feel like he had to play it safe. The director of the scholarship office told him that as along as they say that the student was challenging himself, they wouldn’t pull the scholarship. In face, the said the only circumstances in the last ten years under which they pulled the scholarship was when the student was on academic probation. He’s a rising junior now and very happy there.</p>
<p>“In the case of a serous illness or loss, I see nothing wrong with a compassionate prof allowing an extension or retake. I don’t think they should be expected to extend these accommodations, but I think it’s within their rights to choose to do so.”</p>
<p>I agree with the above, and I think that most professors will do this. When professors don’t do it is when the student simply stops showing up, but at semester’s end suddenly appears asking for an accommodation for something that happened months ago.</p>
<p>I had a student who showed up in my office at 8 a.m. to let me know she would have to miss her noon exam because she had just learned her father had died, and she was flying out of town that morning. Of course, I had no problem scheduling her for a make-up, and offered to schedule it whenever was convenient for her. A year later, I wrote her recommendation to Georgetown Law School, and cited that as evidence of her strong sense of responsibility. She got in (and she also earned an “A” in my exam and course).</p>
<p>I still feel badly about the student who mentioned in class one day that her mother was ill with AIDS and lived 1,000 miles away from school. I told the student that if she had to go be with her mom, I would be willing to make accommodations for her, but she never asked, just stopped coming to class and never contacted me at all. I had to flunk her. </p>
<p>I had a student who took my class 3 times after stopping going due to depression problems that she was being treated for. The first time she took the class, she just stopped coming. I had to flunk her because she hadn’t done any work after about the first 6 weeks. The second time, she told me what had happened, and I told her how she could get a medical excuse if she experienced a serious depression again. However, again, she just stopped coming. The last time, she made it through the class even though her grade dropped from a high B to a “C” by the end due to her handing in weak assignments due to her depression.</p>
<p>However, she was so proud of that passing grade! She knew that she had really earned it, and she told me that she had deliberately taken me each time because she knew that I was a hard, but fair prof. She also had learned that even if she couldn’t hand in assignments that were as perfect as she could have done when she was completely well, it was fine to hand in what she was able to do. Far better to pass a class than to hand in nothing because of being unable to reach her normal standards.</p>
<p>One of the reasons our DS chose RPI was because there were no gpa requirements for maintaining any merit scholarships, and he had 3 totalling $25,000. The rational for the institute policy was it allowed merit scholarship students to formulate an academic program free of gpa/merit scholarship considerations. Because the RPI average gpa hovers around 3.0, I suspect many merit scholarship students have gpa’s in sub-3.0 territory.</p>
<p>This policy made it an easy decision for our son to take credit for his hs AP courses and take additional advanced coursework instead of repeating intro math, science and humanities courses to pad a gpa. It also allowed him to pick up minors in philosophy and game simulation arts jr and sr years.</p>
<p>This is exactly the sort of thing the RPI policy hopes to encourage.</p>
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<p>swimcat, D attends a school where meeting profs outside of class is pretty much expected. Early on I think she was a little intimidated by this as well. However, one of the things she discovered is that the profs are often quite different in one on one situations than her initial impression when classes first begin - much less intimidating and showing a real desire to help interestd students. Thus, she makes it a point to visit all of her profs during office hours at least a couple of times during the semester whether there’s a real need or not. </p>
<p>Maybe if you can convince your D to just make a visit or two for the sake of it, when she’s not necessarily needing specific help or feeling pressure, she will overcome some of the anxiety of meeting with them. Among other benefits, she may find it easier later on to ask for help if needed.</p>
<p>Well, the last few posts sound more humane to me. I think that if someone is sick or there is a true family emergency, reasonable allowances should be made. If a student does not grasp concepts, but does not seek help and doesn’t do anything about it (ie: does not drop the class), and then wants an F turned into a passing grade, that’s wrong.</p>
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<p>What a great idea! My sophomore daughter is an engineering major. She is required to have a 3.2 at the end of this year and it will be close. The stress is awful. </p>
<p>The saddest thing was last year when she asked me if I thought she should change majors because she didn’t know if she would ever be able to maintain a 3.2. Honestly, a 3.0 + is not a bad GPA.</p>
<p>My friend was in a panic thinking her dd was going to lose her merit scholarship. Her daughter had taken a foreign language in 9th and 10th grade only, so she hadn’t used it in 2 years. Then she was placed into the 3rd year of the language at her college and was lost! </p>
<p>She also didn’t realize that doing poorly in a 4 unit class makes a huge dent in a GPA. She was doing well in 2 other classes, but forgot about how the GPA was weighted by units. She should have gotten help or dropped the class, but just didn’t realize until too late.</p>
<p>The good news is that her college only reduced the merit aid by a small amount. They somehow calculated the percentage she was below the GPA requirement, and reduced her merit aid by that same percentage. My friend was so relieved. </p>
<p>She felt really bad that she hadn’t found out all this stuff in advance. She didn’t really know exactly what was required to keep the scholarship and the consequences of a lower GPA. She hadn’t really explained it to her daughter, or helped her decide better about the foreign language class. </p>
<p>Fortunately the school turned out to be generous, and it all worked out in the end, but there was a lot of stress there for both mom and daughter for a while.</p>
<p>I investigated a school that gives out large merit awards. If one loses it, one may qualify for FA (who knows what that package might look), but one may earn back the merit award. To top that off, the student/family will then get back the amount lost during the semester it was taken away (in other words they get reimbursed for whatever the extra amount was that they paid out after the award was lost)! I am sure some think its generous, but to me this is may be looking for a deeper hole. Also, I could not afford to just cut a check for thousands more! I assume that retention and graduation rates for the school play into their method of “re-earning” what was lost. No thanks. I am not going to play that game.</p>
<p>Northeasternmom, what you described seems very generous to me. At the schools that I’m familiar with, if one loses one’s merit aid, it’s permanent. The same is true for merit aid that comes from the state.</p>
<p>Rice U has a 2.8 GPA requirement for most of its scholarships. Nice. ;)</p>
<p>Well, I think that the idea is that most students and their families see it that way. I don’t. I see it as a win:win for the school, and at worst a several thousand dollar hit for the family and/or student. The reason it is a win:win situation for the school is that they get to have a free loan (money that they repay the family later…I don’t see it as merit aid. I view merit aid at this tier 3 as discounting), or they get to keep the extra cash, and they have a higher retention rate for their rankings (the lure of getting the merit aid back). This is all fine for a wealthy family that can afford to spin the roulette wheel and keep their kid at the private school. For the family that really needs this money, it is a hardship. Yes, you can tell kiddo that they owe this money to the family, but lets face it, they are not currently financially independant.</p>
<p>My friend’s S switched majors from engineering to psychology because he was in danger of losing his award due to grades. He said he also lost interest in the subject & field, but one wonders how much grade pressures to be sure to keep his large merit award weighed into his decision to switch majors as a freshman. He professes to find pschology very interesting, but had always loved math & science before this.</p>
<p>One DD has a merit scholarship that requires a 3.0, the next one up requires a 3.5 to maintain it…she is above a 3.5 so was joking she should ask for the larger award ;)</p>
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<p>This is unfortunate. Students with scholarships have earned them with their hard work in high school. Then they are not encouraged to take risks in their learning in college because of GPA requirements. </p>
<p>My daughter’s possible loss of a scholarship does not mean she will have to transfer, as she’s already at a state school. It’s just frustrating that our state is pouring millions of dollars into programs to get students to major in math and science fields and her 3.0 or 3.1 will mean she’s out of the money, so to speak.</p>
<p>Wow - reading these stories really opened my eyes to how stressful keeping up a GPA for a merit scholarship could be. D had a number of merit offers, the one she accepted does not have a GPA requirement, in fact, this line was in the award letter</p>
<p>“…(we believe that) students should be allowed to freely explore a wide range of interests unemcumbered by the need to protect their grade point averages”</p>
<p>Wish that was the case for everyone…guess I have to keep that letter stored away somewhere in case that policy changes</p>
<p>University of Rochester is similar to RPI. The only requirement for keeping a merit award, no matter how large, is “satisfactory progress” - a 2.0. Stay off academic probation and keep the money. In fact, I called Rochester to inquire about the minimum GPA required since there was nothing on the award letter (thanks to CC, I knew to ask!), and they were confused by the question! A few folks in admission didn’t know that other schools had a minimum GPA!</p>
<p>Additionally, Rochester has a process by which a professor informs Academic Services if, at midterm time, the student is likely to get less than a C in the class, and Academic Services informs the student and identifies ways for the student to get help. That way, there’s no surprise at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>himom notes,“Families can & should find out what % of kids retain vs. lose their scholarship at schools being considered.”</p>
<p>Response: Exactly right. My son attended Towson and got a merit scholarship.However, they had a 3.5 requirement for keeping it,which was a lot higher than if they were a national merit scholar. I would bet that at least 75% or more of the kids getting this scholarship lost it. From what I have seen most schools require between 3.0 and 3.2.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest that parents investigate the GPA requirements before blithely sending their kids to some expensive school.In fact, if the school requires a 3.2 or higher, I might even question whether the kid should go there unless you can afford the tuition without the scholarship. I don’t think that any kid should be under enormous pressure to “take certain courses or take certain majors.” College is for exploration. Limiting their course or major choices due to the pressure of getting good grades is wrong in my opinion.If this is the case, I would not send my kid there…period.</p>
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<p>Good luck trying to get this information. In my opinion, it seems like a well guarded secret. I have tried because I prefer to have all of the facts up front. I do believe that many schools do use merit awards as lures, and are “banking” on a certain % of students to lose it, but this is my personal opinion.</p>
<p>Renewable scholarships at D’s school (attached to Honors’ eligibility) reguire 3.2. </p>
<p>However, there are a lot of Merit scholarships for returning students that are applicable only for the following year. Kid has to have GPA=3.8 just to apply. Unfortunately, D. missed deadline this year. She got additional $6500 last year for her Sophomore year. Do not miss applying to these scholarships.</p>
<p>I feel fortunate that my daughter doesn’t have to deal with the added stress of maintaining a certain GPA by the end of the freshman year in order to keep her merit scholarship. She does have to be at the 3.0 mark by the end of sophomore year, but that should be doable as next year’s course schedule looks to be more friendly than this year’s which was a typical pre-med “washout” schedule. I think she’d be fine anyway (3.5 first semester) but I know the stress would have taken a toll. One school she was accepted at with a huge scholarship required a 3.5 by the end of the freshman year and on the pre-med track it just seemed she was staring trouble in the face.</p>