I know the Iowa State board isn’t as active as others so just putting this out there for those that might be looking for information. My D was accepted to ISU in June for the Fall of 2020 and in August she received a letter about the automatic scholarship. She has a 3.8 GPA so she automatically gets a merit as an OOS student. As of Sunday Sept. 1, the additional scholarship link is now open. We took a look at it last night.
Here is what we saw. There were three separate parts for her, the General Application, The School of Design Application and then a Financial Aid Application. A lot of basic information to fill out but there are also several questions that you can explain a bit more, up to 250 words.
For the School of Design application similar on the questions where you have up to 250 words to tell about your self and academic goals, but there is also a request to submit 3-5 pieces of your art/design work. I think I saw that all apps need to be completed by December 1. Also, there are separate parts for current versus incoming Freshman so be aware of that if you are a design major.
The Financial Aid App was like four basic questions. I share this more to say if you have a future Cyclone who is looking to apply for the additional scholarships, don’t wait. There is some work you may need to do to craft your answers or in my D’s case she needs to post some of her work. I wouldn’t wait until the last minute, have your student at least go to the link and see what they have to do for their application. Also, remember the automatic is still contingent on your final transcript so make sure to keep the Senior year grades up.
Overall, the scholarship application while needing to take some time isn’t as bad as my older D’s was for her college. However, it still isn’t something you’re just going to breeze through in 30 minutes. You need to give yourself some time.
Yes, these are additional scholarship opportunities above just the automatic merit awards. It looks like there are potentially department awards that you can apply for and I’m assuming that it will be driven by what your intended major is on the application. For my D, she is a design major so that is why she had the department specific application for the school of design. I believe if you are engineering then you would see a specific app for engineering where my D sees Design.
The general app and the financial app seem to be independent but I have no idea what might be available. I didn’t see anything specific to what type of awards are available to apply. For example, the financial aid had a question “Are you a direct blood decedent of a WW1 veteran?” I think another question was around if you come from a town smaller than 2,500 people. I am assuming they have certain awards targeting these specific groups or give a preference to people that fall to these categories regardless of your intended major.
I would recommend having your student check the scholarship link now that it is open to see what might be available to them.
Thx. No this is to help others. My sons at Michigan for engineering but I had him apply to ISU since a lot of my patients from Illinois go /went there and all love the school and come out with jobs in engineering. I really feel if the school was in Ann Arbor it would be an extreme demand school.
As an aside… If you have questions about design and what to submit, first ask the school but I can give you some clues
@Knowstuff - I enjoy your contributions. I run across you here, on the Grad School forum, and on the University of Michigan forum. My oldest son is a PhD student at Michigan in aerospace engineering, my middle son is at Georgia Tech in their Master of Biomedical Innovation and Development program, and my youngest son is graduating in December from Iowa State with a degree in materials engineering. I agree that Iowa State’s engineering school is top-notch.
@Beaudreau. First off my hat goes off to you on raising very accomplished children. We do have something in common.
My son went to see GT and he got wait listed. We actually count that as a win ?.
My son’s a junior in Industrial engineering at Michigan. If any of your kids find openings for internships for next summer don’t hesitate to PM me ??.
So my patient clientele is young. Most of my patients are some type of engineers or CS etc. Like 60 % honestly. So of course I ask all sort of questions. The kids that go to ISU seem to really enjoy the experience and most have had job offers before or during the senior year. Most had like 2 offers. That’s awesome. Also ISU travels well with great school spirit. I took my son a few years back to Milwaukee for the Ncaa First round tourney. I forgot who you played twice in 3 days but the crowed was like 90% ISU fans and “very” loud.
Thx for the kind words.
What kind of doctor are you; just curious? I am an attorney, working in Arizona, but originally from Michigan. I regularly work with engineers, mostly civil and electrical, in my practice and respect them tremendously.
My daughter will be working on the other scholarships this weekend. She got an award letter a few weeks ago with 2 auto scholarships - the adventure award and the exploration award. Yesterday she got an email telling her she got an auto merit award from the College of Arts and Sciences. In this email they referenced the adventure award but not the exploration award. She logged in and she can see the new scholarship but cannot see anywhere on any portal the adventure or the exploration. Have you found anywhere where you can see the auto merit online? She’d love confirmation that she is receiving all three since the one was missing from the recent email. Has your daughter found that info anyone online? Thanks is advance for your help. My daughter had an excellent visit and a private tour of labs there and it is currently her #1 and is looking to bring the cost down. I think she is going to lobby to us to be done applying anywhere else.
We haven’t looked so I’ll have to ask my D what she might have on her information but based on what we’ve seen I think she only has the automatic based on her GPA. I haven’t really looked much at her portal to see what information it might have but I probably should since she is not very good at checking her e-mails or the portal. She did join the admitted students Facebook group and has met some people but she’s taking a little time to figure out her answers to the scholarship app. We may work on it more this weekend.