Please comment if you or your child received a merit scholarship as a freshman entering fall 2017. (If for reference for a previous year, please mention the year).
Please mention the name of the scholarship, school/major, amount and if it is one-time or renewable each year.
Also, if you would please list basic stats like GPA, ACT/SAT, NMF/NMSF, URM, hooks, Illinois resident or non-resident, etc.
Finally, if you could mention if the award was received with your admission notice, if it appeared later in your myIllini portal or if you received a separate mail/email.
For reference, here is a list of campus wide merit scholarships: https://admissions.illinois.edu/Invest/scholarships-all . At the bottom of the page are links to individual schools that may have additional merit awards. For example, here is a link to engineering merit awards and an FAQ:
Matthews Scholarship $2000 per year for 4 years. Illinois resident, 35 ACT, all 5 on AP’s, commended scholar, white male, the usual honor societies and EC’s, nothing that stands out
Accepted ChemE, James Scholar
Admitted EA but only see " you have not been awarded financial aid for 2017-2018 year" or the like on the portal. Is there still a possibility of me getting any aid?
@superbowser12 I really don’t know. Is it possible that notation is about need-based aid, like if your EFC was too high to get financial aid? My understanding was that while some merit aid has been issued, other merit scholarships may be awarded over the next couple months. For example, I know last year that Engineering merit scholarships were mostly announced at the end of February.
@perch1024 Congrats! And thank you for posting the details as well:-)
I’d expect things to be a little different now. This was 2 years back since Im a current student, it was a generic merit thing through the College of Engineering (literally its just called something like IL Engineering Scholarship on my aid statement)
My stats:
CS CoE
In-state Male
36 ACT
3.85 UW GPA 4.55 W GPA
A couple fluffy ECs, probably peer tutoring being my strongest
Meh Essay
To answer your question, I think there’s a correlation between being a James or Chancellor’s Scholar, but I doubt there’s any causation. The only reason the correlation probably exists is that James and Chancellor’s Scholar are only given to at least the top 10% of admitted students. This same group of students is also, because of statistics, more likely to get scholarships.
Yes I was offered both. I’ve heard there are about 100 scholarships in the engineering department, and only 125 in the CHP, so I figure I have a decent shot for at least something.
@cdhxyx - In another post I’m sure I read that CHP came with a one-time award of $1500 or something like that. I’d think if you were awarded both honors, you should certainly have a better chance at other merit scholarships, too. Even so, on the last post of the thread I linked above, a parent mentioned their child was given the CHP award but no other merit award, so it’s not a guarantee:-(
Seems unlikely, but consider that some majors, like Engineering/CS, have a huge number of applicants with nearly perfect stats and excellent applications. It’s only a guess, but perhaps they try to balance merit awards and CHP awards among the different schools and/or majors within each school? If CHP and scholarship selection staff operate independently, it’s possible that they could pick different students with equally impressive applications in some cases. Perhaps this is even more likely for the most competitive majors like Bioengineering, CS, accounting, etc.
@cdhxyx Good luck! We are still hopeful, too. My senior has a nice offer from Minnesota for honors and a scholarship, and we hope there are more to come from other schools.
I do know that at least some of the major university-wide scholarships @ UIUC have been awarded, but maybe others are yet to be awarded? My kid knows someone who apparently received a full tuition merit scholarship with their admission notice. I had the impression the recipient had slightly lower stats, but I think they applied to a different school and I don’t know about URM/hooks.
I am also aware that some early action admits received a letter from the school of engineering that they were eligible for a scholarship, but that the details would not be available until the end of February. I’ll also reply back with any new information. Maybe some others will chime in if they received one for this fall or in previous years.
Got my award letter today and sadly didn’t really get anything. In total, It’d be near full pay to go and that’s just not affordable for us. Bummed, but oh well, at least I had a chance to attend. I thought maybe CS majors would get a little more because of the competitiveness. Congrats to those who got awards and good luck!