<p>Daughter received a letter today "it is with great excitement, informing you of your selection as the recipient of a scholarship package"..............annual amount $6,000. Ouch. Her stats - OOS 3.8 unweighted GPA, 31 ACT, 8AP classes, CIS Spanish, Captain of a varsity sport, etc. The rep who visited our school, and strongly encouraged her to apply, seemed pretty confidant that she would be offered the "upper range" of the merit scholarship in her category. We had even discussed having D retake the ACT as the money for a 32+ was significantly higher - but between captaining a winter sport and taking really difficult classes, she felt she didn't have the time to study to retake the ACT. In hindsight I guess that was a mistake. The cost of attendance at Miami with such a small scholarship will take it off of her list. Best of luck to everyone else.</p>
<p>Ouch. So sorry. That scholarship seems so low for someone with such great stats.</p>
<p>Well, 32 is the cut off. The rest of her stats are great though. She should get some money elsewhere. You have to figure out where!</p>
<p>OP - I feel for you and think you have raised a valid topic. With her grades and ACT she was guaranteed $6,000 to $12,000.</p>
<p>My son is a junior at Miami and loves it - so we are all big Miami fans. He told me the school paper recently indicated that this year was the largest number of applications Miami ever received. My daughter is a HS senior and applied (she likes the school, but it is really her midwestern backup - she has her heart set on going to college in the south). At her HS is suburban Chicago, (which already has a good number of applicants and attendees each year), the number of applications to Miami doubled this year - due in no small measure to the change in the scholarship program. In your case I wonder if they simply felt they were running out of funds due to the increase in applications? While I’m sure they are running their estimation models, these scholarships are new datapoints and they are probably less confident with their numbers.</p>
<p>Concerning scholarship decisions, my daughter is a top student (accepted EA to Notre Dame) and has a full tuition scholarship offer from Alabama, and huge offers from South Carolina and Clemson. With a 33 ACT she qualified for the 50 to 100% scholarship at Miami - she got $20,000 a year or 70%. Now that’s not bad, and at first I wasn’t expecting an offer at the highest end of the range, but a few hours before we received the letter, several people here on CC with similar gpa’s and lower (32) ACT’s posted that they got four years full tuition! What gives? I speculated in another thread that since my son got the top OOS scholarship 3 years ago ($9,000 a year) they are betting that they don’t need to offer tippy top money to my daughter. I believe they are assuming she is likely to attend Miami since her brother does and that since they are offering her more than double what her brother received, we should be happy. </p>
<p>Since this is the first year of the new program there is definitely a learning curve.</p>
<p>I think ChicagoBear makes valid points regarding the numbers game. They don’t know what this automatic merit will yield in terms of actual kids enrolling. My D also had a 33 ACT, 4.4W GPA (with 9 AP’s) great EC’s and is a tremendous writer. We are also from a school where kids rarely look to go out of state. There is another boy from our school who will be attending MU on an ROTC scholarship. My D received full tuition+ for for years and Honor College but has not committed yet. MU is high on the list and a good match for her. Waiting on some other full tuition scholarship decisions.</p>