Does anyone know of a site that lists the percentages of merit scholarships that are renewed, by school?
I know that schools have different GPA requirements in order to keep merit scholarships, which should be an indication of “harder or easier” to keep, but I am looking beyond that for actual renewal stats.
If no such list is available, would this be an appropriate question to ask at an info session?
The schools will tell you that the provisions of renewal for your merit award will be contained in your award letter.
Most schools have a huge variety of merit awards…the provisions of renewal vary depending on the specific scholarship.
I doubt they can tell you exactly what your terms will be…but sure…you can ask.
Thanks Thumper. My question is more around how many students fail to maintain the award beyond freshman year? For example, if they give out 100 merit awards to freshmen and only 40% on average meet the criteria (whatever that happens to be), that would concern me. If, on the other hand, 98% of the freshmen maintain the award, I would feel better.
As my D looks for safety schools, we don’t want to apply to a school that offers good merit aid if, in reality, the scholarships are difficult to keep at that school. Hope that clarifies.
You might want to question more along the lines of the academic rigor of the courses.
You also might want to know generally what the GPA is for renewal…except, like I said…this can vary depending on the specific scholarship.
For example. Barrett Honors College scholarships at Arizona require a very high GPA for continuation of the award. Very high.
One of my kids had one award that only required a 2.5 GPA…which was easily attainable.
Both of my kids had scholarships that required a 3.0 each term (no averaging over the year) to keep their awards.
Not only look at the GPA required to keep (look for those that are a 3.0 or lower), but ALSO look at when the GPA gets looked at (after one semester? after one year?), and also see if there is any kind of probation to get it back.
I know that my kids’ undergrad has a rather generous policy…the GPA is looked at after spring semester (year end). If at that point, the cum GPA is below 3.0, then the student must get a 3.0 for the following fall semester.
Some schools seem as if they want kids to lose their awards by having high req’ts. I think Texas A&M requires a 3.5… To me, that seems short-sighted since many kids would have to leave the school if they lost their awards.
Thanks @mom2collegekids. Your point about Texas A&M is exactly what I’m trying to guard against.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback!
It also needs to be in the context of the student’s major. Engineering is notoriously tough in the first year, and a 3.5 gpa is very, very hard to achieve. It might not be as tough to achieve in Econ or Psych.
The schools should have the statistics. I’ve known quite a few kids who lost their Florida Bright Futures awards for one reason or another, usually grades, but for not taking 12 credits, for not repaying for dropped credits. My daughter has a bunch of different requirements for her grants and awards, ranging from 3.0 to 2.0, and when the awards are reviewed varies, but most are once a year after spring semester.
Third and unranked law schools were very big on granting big awards the first year and then revoking them a few years ago, and the ABA came down on them hard. They really were a ‘bait and switch’ tactic to get students into the schools for year one (free) and then charging $40k+ for the final two years.
I don’t think what you are looking for is published. However we can discern something from the merit scholarship numbers reported in CDS. I’ve looked at these for quite a few colleges, and usually the merit aid numbers for freshmen vs. all students are similar enough that you would expect the renewal rates to be very high.
Interestingly, Texas A&M shows a quite noticeable difference:
These numbers, if consistent from year to year, would suggest that at least 20% of students end up losing their merit scholarships.
A more typical case is Tulane, where the drop off is not so noticeable:
If you go to collegedata.com and for each school look under the money tab and then scroll down to awards you can see how much “non-need aid” was given freshman year and then subsequent years. It is a good thing to see to determine if schools give less merit for subsequent years.
Excellent idea, @BobWallace. Thanks!
For what it’s worth, I looked up the data for 5 schools and found interesting nuggets on a few:
Northeastern: Average merit amount dropped from $20,784 (freshmen) to $12,959 (all undergrad), a 37% decrease (wow)!
Stony Brook: Average amount dropped by 15% ($4,953 to $4,230), but more telling is the number of recipients. They had 368 freshmen, but only 664 total undergrads (including freshmen). Sounds like there must be a mistake in their numbers but if not, I find that troubling.
Hofstra: Both numbers and amounts dropped. Average award dropped 25% from $16k to $12k, and the number went from 366 (freshmen) to 1339 undergrads (would’ve expected more like 1460 or so).
Skidmore: According to their website, offers 5 math/science scholarships and 4 music scholarships. However, only list 3 Freshmen receiving merit, and only 11 undergrads (which indicates that the 3 is pretty consistent). I think this answers one of my other posts about whether or not colleges “scale up” their awards to end up with (in this case 5 and 4). Guess not…
The only school I looked at that had nothing noteworthy was Lafayette. Consistent number of recipients and not a huge drop in $.
Thanks for the great advice everyone. I’m really going to need to do some “deeper dives” into this analysis as we narrow down D’s college list.
The numbers you found are MEANINGLESS. They don’t tell you how much in aid was one year only awards to begin with.
I’m not familiar with any one year awards for freshmen from these colleges. Can you give examples?
Following: Very scary for an engineering/math/CS student.
Getting GPA >3.5 in engineering school may be challenging even for straight A students from high school.
Univ Kansas seems to have huge drop–17.4% freshmen! only 10% all undergrads. They do require 3.4. Plus, I’m pretty sure the scholarships cannot be renewed beyond 4 years. And looks like their 5&6 year graduation cohorts are sizeable. Depressing because my daughter seems fixated on KU as her favorite honors program.
OP, you should look for a renewal GPA of 3.0 or less. Average engineering school GPA’s are usually in the 2.7-2.9 range. I’m sure you can get high grades if you set your mind to it, but you might want to minimize the risk of loosing your $$ as much as possible. Not having the pressure/fear in the back of your head could even help you perform better.
Is the KU number such a big drop because they are including those 5th and 6th year undergrads? If even a few who don’t finish in 4 years and thus use up the scholarship are included, that would cause the number of undergrads receiving merit to fall.
One DD has a merit scholarship that runs for 8 consecutive semesters. She asked if she could take a semester off to do an internship (not through the school) and they said that they’d consider it, but it is not automatic. Other daughter is an engineer and her scholarship doesn’t work in the summer, so if she needs to go an extra semester or take extra classes, it’s on us to pay. She’d still be an undergrad, so I assume she’d be included in the stats.