Regarding GPA to become Finalist

Paying for College National Merit Aid
1

Hello people,

I am in the class of 2016 and recently took the SAT as well as the PSAT earlier. I scored a 234 on the PSAT and a 2260 on SAT. I’ve made, so far, all As in my semester grades in Freshman, Sophmore, and Junior year up to now (although that’s subject to possibly change).

I live in Texas so I certainly still made the cut despite the high standards. I’m confident I can make finalist but of course I question the GPA aspect of things.

What, in the last few years, has the observed/inferred criteria for rejecting people been based on? I’m wondering because I’ve read people making 2 or so semester Cs yet still making Finalist, while others that did not. It’s a weird deal and I wonder what saved them as opposed to other people.

Also, do they generally give less weight on GPA if you score sufficiently high on the SAT/PSAT compared to other candidates? For example, will they look at the candidate with a 3.4 UW GPA 234/2280 over/equally to a 3.9 UW 220/2190?

2

I don’t think anyone knows. It seems that any Cs makes you an iffy candidate, but besides that, if you just have As and Bs and have scores above the minimum, you are usually good. (Assuming you don’t get into trouble at school or write a rude essay.) I don’t know that a higher SAT score trumps a lower GPA, though it can’t hurt to have a high score.

Sometimes people got semester Cs in year courses, but got Bs in the course overall, so if the GC only put in the year grades (which is an option) it might show up as a B. One kid that got rejected a few days ago had one C, but it was in a one-semester health class, so it would have showed up as a C on the grade report. It varies by year as well and there’s no exact published criteria besides “record of high academic achievement” or something vague like that.

3

Thanks for your opinion. Would be great if anyone could share anymore related insight or opinions.