Help on how Merit scholarships are awarded!!! - My son was accepted to a selective college in New England, ave SAT 1140, ave GPA 3.3. His stats are 1350 / 3.5 unweighted. He received a $16000 merit scholarship out of a possible $20000. When I called to ask how they determined the amount I was told it was based strictly on unweighted GPA and SAT scores determined by a company they outsource the job of awarding Merit scholarships to. My son took only honors and 8 AP classes, and his school rates their strength of curriculum out of 10. My son’s was a 10 out of 10. When I asked if a child who took a lower strength of curriculum, say 5 out of 10 but had a 3.8 GPA receive more Merit? The answer was yes!
Is this how it is at every University? It would appear to me this University does not value students who want to strongly challenge themselves and surround themselves with students who feel them same. Why would a school set lower standards for their Merit - I understand my son should do his best and take the best classes but why should he end up $16,000 more in DEBT than a kid who chose to take the easier way out? ARE ALL UNIVERSITIES LIKE THIS - if so I need to have my other kids dumb down their curriculum choices so they won’t drown in debt.
I am not aware of colleges that award merit in the manner that you are describing… if I am understanding correctly.
There are some schools that use a strict grid for merit…with GPA on the top row, and test scores running down the column. And for some if you have the same test score, but a higher GPA, you will get more merit.
That said, for most schools, test scores are the biggest driver for merit.
If you’re not happy with this school’s award, then quickly have him apply to schools where he’s get better awards.
Does his school weight GPAs? If not, then that should change as well.
Colleges vary in how they use GPA. For example, some recalculate a weighted GPA their own way. Others accept the high school weighted GPA (advantageous if your high school has exaggerated weighting).
Truly selective schools will expect students to take the most rigorous curriculum possible. Avoiding AP and honors courses will greatly limit their chances of acceptance let alone “merit” money.
Is your son borrowing the entire cost of education not covered by scholarships? If so, you need to look for the lowest cost options available to meet your son’s educational goals, and not let him apply to just any school he finds exciting. Note that the federal student loan program has a maximum amount of 5500 for freshmen.
If you are low income, you should also verify that there isn’t another offer of need-based aid coming from this school after you do the FAFSA and any other required financial aid forms.
Merit aid policies vary widely by school, based on the school’s budget, supply and demand, and recruitment priorities. It is pretty common for large state schools to just look up grades and scores on a table, but more holistic schools may make decisions on a more individualized basis where course rigor would work more in someon’s favor.
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selective college in New England, ave SAT 1140, ave GPA 3.3>>>>>>
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That defies the definition of selective.
Selective=private
There are schools that award merit based solely on stats. The school doesn’t care about rigor or class rank. The U. of Wyoming is one. There is a chart with ACT scores and gpa graphed out and you get the amount the chart says you get. They don’t care about the 10 AP classes your child took or about class rank. If the highest gpa in the class is a 3.5, that 3.5 is going to get the same merit money as someone who was 40th in his class with a 3.5 from a different school.
It usually works out that the kids with the better stats get the most money. I’m sure there are students who take easier classes and still get the higher amount but the top students are getting that too - it isn’t held against them that they took 10 APsunless they got C’s in those classes.
The school your son got the scholarship from determines the scholarship requirements. Sound like they want the student to have a 4.0 and a 1500 to get that tippy top full scholarship. Maybe they list the range of merit awards from $10-20k and give out a lot of $10k scholarships and only one $20k scholarship per year. As long as they give out one, they can claim that range. My D attends a school that gives ONE full ride, everything bagel scholarship per year, and only to an instate student (it’s a private school, but this scholarship goes to an instate student). The school gets to claim it is giving scholarships from $13k to $58k, even though most students get $13 or $18k and just ONE gets that $58k ($41k in tuition). Their money, their rules.
If it does not admit all who apply, then it is selective. It may be only minimally or moderately selective, though.
@ucbalumnus and @Sybylla - Sorry the “selective” term was taken directly from US News and World report and how they “ranked” the university. So yes, I would go with moderately selective, it was a safety school for him and why we thought he would get more merit. Some kids who were from our high school and at the university now had gotten more merit over the past 2-3 years and guidance found out this is the first year the school has “outsourced” their merit aid awards and to make it simple just goes on unweighted/SATs. Those kids who had gotten more merit had lower stats than my son and had taken less challenging courses. It has put a bad taste in our mouth for the school as it does not seem to want to take those kids who chose to pursue the most challenging coursework among peers who are the same. Thanks for all the feedback.
I’ve seen colleges, for merit purposes, that take the GPA as the school puts it on the transcript - weighted if the HS does it that way, schools that rework the GPA to strip out non-core courses (anything but science, English, math etc) and schools that take unweighted GPA.
I think it depends in part how much time they have to put into it.
3.5 UW gap is always going to be a challenge when you want merit.
The kid apparently got 80 percent of the maximum award here. He didn’t do too badly. The problem is that the family needs to borrow to make up the difference.
While some large public universities have scholarship charts, most smaller schools keep their aid and scholarship formulas as competitive secrets so there’s no way to tell when things change. When merit is not guaranteed before applying, you need to apply to multiple options.
The OPs issue was the use of unweighted GPA in the awarding of merit aid. The OP is implying that wGPA is better. The issue is that for every flaw with GPA there is a flaw with wGPA. I believe wGPA has even more when you are comparing students across HSs. Even if you had the same weighting process, differences in availability of certain classes cause issues. Some schools only allow APs to be taken by Seniors and may limit the number (2). Others, freshmen may take APs. Some schools have none. Some HS every class is considered honors+ due to the selectivity of the school. There just isn’t a good method to compare different HS wGPAs. I do like Miami University method of trying to resolve this issue. They have 3 qualifiers for merit aid: Standardardized Scores, GPA, and High School Curriculum. This avoids some of the OPs concerns of students taking the easy way out to try to get merit.
I think the original question in that old one - is it worth taking a non-honors or easy A class to keep the GPA up since some schools do award merit based on the GPA. Some high schools make the Val the kid with the highest GPA even if it includes some easy A classes (of course what is easy for one kid is hard for another).
It’s really a personal choice. I don’t think it works well to take easier classes because your child still needs to cover the material to pass the SAT and get into the school. If you know the school you want to go to, you can play with the schedule but most high school students don’t know exactly which school they are going to apply too so don’t know if the gpa is more important than the rigor, or how much scholarship money is at stake.
I say don’t make any choices to get a higher gpa than you would normally make. If you want to take the honors class, take it. If you want to take art, take it.
There are other advantages to taking the hardest classes in HS. My daughter has taken the hardest courses at her high school (she is a senior) and has not always made As. However, she has made friends and studied with the best students in the school and that has motivated her to keep up with them. For schedule reasons, she had to take a lower level Physics class and she is feels held back and ends up doing all the work in her group assignments.
So the thread title is asking about telling the younger kids they should take easier classes. To me, this would depend on your family - if your younger kids are the same type of student as your elder kid, and they have the same aspirations of applying to and attending a private, selective school, then sure, it makes sense to tell them financially they might be better off with a slacker schedule.
But IMO, kids are better off, especially when they get to college, if they have challenged themselves throughout high school.
If your younger kids attend a different school that gives credit for AP’s, they might graduate a semester early, saving more than the $16K you think your older child “lost”.
Kids are all different people - and while many love the idea of following in older siblings footsteps, many others cringe at that idea, and they crave the idea to do something different.
You know your family better than we can ever know, so you will know what’s best. You’ve done well by your first - he has very good grades and test scores - and raising a student who will be toward the top of his college class is pretty terrific. If he will be happy there, and will do well there, and you can reasonably afford to send him, then great job!
@Eeyore123 - Thanks for the link to Miami U. That is actually a really good method to a very complex problem.