<p>My rising sophomore son has several scholarships that enable him to attend an expensive LAC. He has always been a straight A student, but this freshman year he had major adjustments to make socially and academically, and he came out with a 3.04 GPA. I feel that he learned a lot about life, and did his best in his freshman year. He was a serious student, but needed to learn about time-management and study skills, as well as things like roomate changes, etc.</p>
<p>The Presidental Scholarship, which amounts to a large chunk of his package, requires 3.1 GPA. He is OK with the other scholarships, which require 3.0, but the financial aid letter that we just received says that the Presidential will need to be reevaluated in December and will not apply this Fall.</p>
<p>The question is, can he talk to them with any chance of leniency? His financial aid officer will be in the office on Monday, and he plans to call. I'm wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and has any advice. This coincides with an inheritance, so we can (just) pay the difference, but ouch, it hurts.</p>
<p>can he talk to them with any chance of leniency?</p>
<p>Sure he can do that. But, review with him before he calls…you can role play…</p>
<p>Try this…</p>
<p>1) First see if they’ll just let him have the money since he’s close, or give him the money as “financial aid” if he qualifies for that.</p>
<p>2) If they won’t go for that, see if you can negotiate this…if YOU pay the first semester and he gets a 3.3+ (or whatever you think is very likely), they will “back pay” the fall semester scholarship and you’ll get your money back. I wouldn’t tell them that you’re paying it with an inheritance…don’t be specific…they can assume that you’re begging, borrowing, stealing the money to cover that first semester.</p>
<p>Are you sure there is no standard appeal process? My D fell below her scholarship GPA freshman year due to a rocky first semester, but was able to appeal the loss of the scholarship in writing–basically she had to explain what went wrong and how she planned to fix it. (Needless to say I had quite a bit of input on what to say and how to say it–it helped that her second semester was far better than her first, so she could show a positive trend.) She was allowed to keep her award, and we later learned that almost every student is given a second chance if they can come up with a good appeal. I think this is a very typical approach at colleges, and if your son’s school doesn’t offer any flexibility, they are way too harsh. It’s so easy to stumble freshman year given all the adjustments, academic and social! BTW, at D’s school, it’s the Dean of Students, not the financial aid folks, who administers merit awards–be sure you’re talking to the right people. And good luck!</p>
<p>Colleges have different policies. If you know for certain that “your” college doesn’t have an appeal or grace period, I’d vote for Mom2’s approach of trying to negotiate and/or begging My S1 lost a smallish college scholarship by 1/10th of a point for one semester and I certainly tried negotiating coupled with some polite begging as well as sending his sorry butt in to do some groveling. Didn’t work and his college didn’t back down on that semester money, but don’t let that thought stop you especially if it’s significant money and is going to cause significant hardship for you.</p>
<p>He’s going to call Monday and just inquire about their policy, and we’ll take it from there. At this point we don’t know what we’ll need to do, but thanks for all the suggestions. Yes, it will be a significant hardship, even though the money can be scraped up. So it wouldn’t automatically be converted into need-based. Thanks again! Any more stories welcome!</p>
<p>If this doesn’t work out, if your child is not taking out the max student loans for this next year, I would have him do so. I hope he’s also working this summer and is setting some money aside for this possible problem.</p>
<p>I don’t like the message a kid gets if parents just hand over their inheritance (that you probably had other plans for) to cover his tush. If this negotiation doesn’t work out, you do need to work out something with your son so he contributes in some way of paying you back.</p>
<p>You and your son should talk to the financial aid officer and ask if there is any appeal process, anything he can do. Sadly, when my son fell under the required GPA, that was it for him. He lost his scholarship for good. Getting his grades up did not mean getting the scholarship back for future terms.</p>
<p>Does your school offer different levels of merit awards? Could he drop down a level and still retain a smaller award?</p>
<p>I wonder if the school will be more generous if they think he won’t be able to return.</p>
<p>I was wondering the same thing. If this school is at all “ratings conscious”, their retention rate from freshman year will be very important to them.</p>
<p>It has been a few days - can the original poster tell us what happened? We are new to this process, but would it help if he took a summer course and got an A? (Probably too late for this student, but would be good for future reference…)</p>
<p>Good suggestions, which we will definitely use as needed. Thanks to all who weighed in! I was waiting until after son calls his financial aid rep tomorrow (Monday) to update here. We are all on tenterhooks…will post with the results of tomorrow’s conversation.</p>
<p>Son got an email today from Financial Aid telling him they have referred his situation to an “appeal process.” It is a relief to know that that exists! He is going to call to see exactly what that entails, and I will let you all know what the upshot is and how he intends to address it. We would like to sit with him and help him draft a letter explaining his circumstances if they will accept that.</p>
<p>Good luck I hope it goes well.</p>
<p>We have been holding our breath watching our daughters cumulative GPA drop a little each year. Fortunately she had a very good freshman year so had a cushion which really helped her keep her scholarship and she is going into her final year , so we can breath again. If her latest year had been her freshman year’s grades she would have lost her scholarship a long time ago. Something students really need to be aware of is that, however well they did in HS, college is different and some caution needs to be exercised that first year when choosing classes. Probably especially for those students that found HS easy and assume college will be the same!</p>
<p>True, swimcatsmom, about taking care when choosing first year classes. He is a math major, so those classes were fun but challenging. Then he decided he wanted to take Latin, and some other more difficult classes. He did relatively well, B average in everything, but for the scholarship he needs 3.1 instead of 3.04!</p>
<p>Could he take a summer course, any course, and get an A to raise his GPA by fall? Would they allow him to take something at your local school?</p>
<p>Had he taken a PE class or any other class in a subject which he enjoys and would be considered easy, he could have upped that GPA, if they are willing to recognise this, then perhaps a transfer summer class would do the job</p>
<p>somemom, that’s a good idea. We will keep it in mind as there is a local community college that he could take a class at this summer. </p>
<p>The way it stands now, he is waiting for a call back from financial aid. They responded to his email by saying they would inform him of the appeal process in three weeks. Too long for us all to be holding our breath! He left them a voicemail offering to send a letter of explanation. If they don’t respond, I think he should send it anyway, but I guess we’ll give them a few days to get back to us.</p>