My DD will be going to UA on Presidential Scholarship for Fall '17. Is there any kind of penalty if classes are dropped after registration or even classes starting? Since tuition is covered by the scholarship, I wasn’t sure how this worked if she felt the need to drop a class if she felt overwhelmed. She’s already a bit stressed out by the idea of maintaining a minimum GPA to keep her funding! Any advice or info picked up by your student’s experience with these scholarships is appreciated.
There is no penalty. I think if you drop by a certain date (the last date for dropping without a “W”) you’ll get a refund of your course fees for the dropped course. There may be other implications if the drop results in her not being a full time student (federal financial aid, some insurance, etc.), but these aren’t UA-specific. I would advise her to take a mix of easy and difficult classes, to attend every class, and to seek help ASAP if she feels she is not doing well or understanding the material. While she obviously needs to work hard to keep her GPA up (something she would want to do even if she didn’t have a scholarship), I don’t think she should stress about losing the scholarship. 3.0 is a pretty generous threshold, and the probation procedures are pretty generous as well. What’s her major? How many hours was she planning on taking?
Thanks @beth’s mom ! I know she’ll work hard and the 3.0 is definitely a generous threshold. I’ll let her know about probation, which hopefully she won’t need. She’s majoring in Creative Media, a new major in the Journalism department. It replaces Telecommunication and Film as far as I can tell. Very different track from the engineering majors I hear so much about! She has some AP credit going in, so was not going to go heavy first semester. Maybe 15 hours, with 1-2 in Honors if possible. She’s a wonderful student and is probably worrying too much!
DS found himself on scholarship probation because he stuck with a class he was doing poorly in. Nearly half the class dropped it. Stuck it out and failed, killed his GPA. One class. So it can happen faster than you think.
This past semester was spent trying to raise his GPA. He managed to get it high enough to come off probation, but is now taking the failed class over. Hoping second time around with a different instructor will make a difference.
However, @beth’s mom is correct. Bama has a very generous procedure in not only giving them opportunity to raise GPA back to 3.0, but they can also stay on probation until their overall GPA improves as well.
@larale That’s the kind of situation she’s worried about. I’m glad things are working out for your son. Thank you for sharing!