<p>School #1 said they will give my son $2000 more if he increases his ACT by one point.</p>
<p>School #2 just awarded son's friend $3000 more than my son was offered. This kid's GPA is substantially lower plus he's never been in any extra curricular activities. His ACT is higher. My son is such a hard-worker compared to this kid, playing on several varsity sports' teams and still keeping up his grades.</p>
<p>Yes, this is sometimes true. What schools are we talking about?</p>
<p>I agree- the colleges want to buy stats for rankings. ACT/SAT scores are what they buy with scholarship money not GPA.</p>
<p>Toledo - look at the school website, many of these merit scholarships/tuition discounts are posted right in the websites and are a range: GPA of X and/or ACT or SAT of X equals $x scholarship. The and/or is the key. Some take the higher of he two (or) and some require both (and). Probably your son is at the top of one merit tuition discount and literally one more point on the ACT will boost him up to the next level. School #2 was probably a “or” school. Your son’s friend was awarded based on his ACT score and not his GPA. While these are often called scholarships they are pretty cut and dried, no application needed, they are awarded automatically based on the numbers.</p>
<p>Totally dependent on the school and the scholarship within the school. IMO</p>
<p>Several years ago our state legislature decided it needed to do something to discourage a ‘brain drain’ to neighboring states. Their quick fix was to offer a state-financed scholarship based entirely on ACT score, good at any accredited college in the state, private or public. I believe they would have liked to include other measures, but gpa is incredibly non-standard across the state, and subjective measures like extra-curriculars would have been impossible to objectively measure, for a program administered by the state government, not individual universities.</p>
<p>As you can imagine, there are a LOT of retakes of the ACT around here. One point improvement can mean 12K over 4 years.</p>
<p>Almost all the people on parent’s forum accused me of many nasty things when I said I wish my DD’s ACT is 1 or 2 points higher, not for admissions but for scholarships. </p>
<p>Hope they could see this. </p>
<p>It is a scholarship and scholar means test scores and GPA, IMHO.</p>
<p>I am impressed they offered to increase it - my daughter’s SAT’s went up since she got a merit scholarship at a school - guess I am going to have them give another look!</p>
<p>What specific scholarship are you talking about? Can you name one at any of your D’s potential schools that cuts off $$ if an ACT score is 34? If the ACT score is not mentioned (or a range is given) in the scholarship requirements, then a 34 is plenty high & the school WANTS the flexibility of considering ECs, chosen major, community service, or anything else that they (or the philanthropist who donated the $$) desires to reward.</p>
<p>JUst for laughs, I looked up the Vanderbilt scholarship details:
If you notice the language, when stats are mentioned the numbers are qualified with the modifiers “unually” and “typically.” But the strong ledership or exceptional talent outside the classroom have no modifiers; it simply states that those awarded $$ “exhibited” those qualities. The music candidates “earned” outstanding scores. Again, no qualifiers.</p>
<p>Clearly your D would be in the running for these scholarship dollars if her stats are considered. I have no idea if her leadership & talent is exceptional enough. You will have to wait & see. But an extra point or two on the ACT will have made absolutely no difference. She already met those qualifications & would have been better off concentrating on ways to demonstrate leadership, rather than study to bump an already terrrific ACT score.</p>
<p>Some scholarships at some schools are very stats driven; that being said, some schools will look at things in the way which results in the best award for your student.</p>
<p>My D attended two different HSs and community college. The grading was vastly different as was the ranking, the school made every effort to justify the highest possible award</p>
<p>These two schools are small Catholic universities and scholarships were automatically awarded from the application. I checked both web sites and scholarship information is non-existant on one and very vague on the other. The vague one claims they use academic merit, test scores, and class rank. </p>
<p>My son got into the program, while his friend did not. His friend had to pick another major. My son got the more popular major, but the friend got more money. So program acceptance was based on GPA and scholarship money was based on test scores.</p>
<p>Dad II, there are automatic scholarships (where a score of 28 instead of 29, or gpa 3.7 instead of 3.75 will put a candidate to a different column of the table, and will result in a different amount of money). And there are competitive scholarships. Where 34 or 36 will make no difference (or very small difference), as long as the score is over a cut-off (I believe the cut-off is 31 in the case you are talking about). So, the kids who have the scores over the cut-off are competing with each other in ECs, leadership, essay writing… depending on the scholarship requirements.</p>
<p>Please do not mix them together.</p>
<p>Weird, isn’t it. I was impressed in conversations with both Whitworth (WA) and Baylor (TX) how they try to find a way to look at your situation in the most flattering way. In my Ds case they agreed to completely disregard rank if the SAT met the standard. In another Ds case the uni said they would take the rank in the most advantageous way calculated- our school ranked using grades 10/11 only, but they could added in grade 9 for that uni if it would have bumped her. It never hurts to call and ask if they can look at it any differently</p>
<p>Like midmo our state offers scholarships based on high Stats. It is a combination of State money (a cash award) and institutional (full tuition waiver) directed at encouraging high scorers to stay in State. One is only ACT the other is one point lower on the ACT and GPA or rank is factored in. My daughter retook the ACT 2 weeks after she graduated HS in order to qualify - that one point gain is worth thousands of dollars a year. Many other scholarships at her school are based on scores but there are others that factor in leadership and ECs. But to be even looked at you usually have to meet a score cut off. I think they try to spread the wealth a bit. For instance my daughter was 5 points above the score cut off for one scholarship but did not get it. Probably because she was not president of this, that or the other. So students with lower scores would get those but not the one she got. It all balances out.</p>