Very disappointed after promoting Rowan to two well qualified, great kids from middle class families as a place where merit aid was plentiful to see paltry merit money offered.
Accepted student into ENG program was only offered 3K, and had 1420 SAT, 3.9 GPA and (30 community college credits in science and math area with all A’s).
Accepted student #2 into Exploratory/Undeclared was offered $ 0 and had 1340 SAT, active in school and leadership roles.
Unlikely either of these students will choose Rowan and join my kids there. Very bummed.
That is surprising. The engineering I think maybe could be because so many engineering kids have very high stats but the exploratory? IDK. How was that GPA?
That is really disappointing, and it also doesn’t make sense given the awards I’ve read about here. Is it possible for the students or guidance counselor to reach out to Rowan Admissions?
Is there any chance the 30 community college credits are creating a problem? Could they be classifying him as a transfer and not a freshman?
@MACmiracle I agree it is disappointing and I hope appeals will be successful. Both students are bright, but also vibrant members of their community.
The student with the community college credits is a bit of a unique case - homeschooled.
In this case the courses were taken to provide challenge and prove worth (to avoid the inevitable thought of “Of course the parent gave a 4.0”). While I can’t say some credits won’t be transferred, it would likely be the same as my daughter’s 29 credits brought in due to AP coursework. I see your point about confusing with a transfer, so I will pass that along to my friend.
My high schoolers go to high school now but I homeschool until high school, and I homeschooled my oldest through high school, so I sympathize with the position of homeschoolers. But I’ve seen kids get put into difficult positions by parents who don’t understand how freshman merit scholarships are awarded.
Many parents I know have started their homeschooled high school kids taking classes at Rowan or one of the community colleges that are now part of Rowan. Some think they will spare their kids having to take the SAT that way. I know Rowan requires the SAT for homeschooled freshman applicants but there is the cc backdoor. Others think they are proving their kids’ abilities or getting high school and college credit without realizing they are jeopardizing scholarships.
So many homeschoolers are doing this now that I almost want to give a presentation for homeschool parents before their kids start high school because some kids are starting to take cc classes as early as their freshman year of high school, and they need to know the repercussions of taking that route.
One big issue is that Rowan College at Gloucester County (formerly Gloucester County College) now offers homeschooled high school students a huge discount, like 40% off classes, I think. So homeschooled kids are coming in from all the surrounding counties to take advantage of the great deal. All everyone thinks is that they are giving the kids a great experience and the kids are fortunate to be working toward a high school and college degree simultaneously, They think they will save money and stress when the kids can seamlessly transfer to the university when it’s time. But it’s not always the best option.
Now for average kids, it’s still an amazing deal but not for higher stat kids who would be eligible for good merit if they were careful to maintain their freshman status.
@MACmiracle This is not my friend’s first rodeo (4th child) I think the school just made a mistake.
Regardless, this situation still doesn’t explain the zero merit given to the other student, who had a 1340 SAT, 3.7 GPA and leadership/school participation.
I hope the school can offer more (or made a mistake. My son got a decent offer, similar to what we were expecting/hoping for. His SAT score is higher. I’ve heard that makes a difference.
@NJWrestlingmom The previous low cutoff point on the chart I have was 1250. There are other kids posting scores of 1320 from last year’s class that received $6,000, so I don’t think your memory is accurate
There is no way that Rowan honestly could afford to limit ‘Merit Aid’ to only students who score over 1350 on SAT’s or 29 in ACT values! Those values are in the 90-93 percentile and Rowan does not command those level of students as their ‘threshold’ for aid. TCNJ… YES as they are attracting ‘out-of-state’rs’ in record number, even Rutgers has increased in double digits this year in lucrative ‘out of state’rs’. Rowan may have a higher pool this year, which is still left to see as they to date have appeared extremely slow with Admissions decisions for the ‘masses’ (i.e. other than Engineering and BioSciences), but Rowan also represents a very common NJ ‘Safety School designation’ based on data provided by Naviance and NJ HS Guidance Assoc.
The Aid we are seeing so far, if it is ‘representative’ of the actual amount offered/to be offered this year, means many more students may be looking elsewhere because they will get it elsewhere.
Use ‘Data’ not just Forums to judge. NJRoadie is extremely experienced with Rowan and another source, Naviance, is hooked directly into NJ HS’s so it’s an excellent indicator of what’s happening THIS YEAR… as for us, and many of you on this site… this year is ALL THAT MATTERS to you and your kids!
I visited Rowan this year and I can say for certain that during the admission presentation they showed a very basic info graphic showing merit scholarships starting at just above average stats. I can’t remember exact numbers (maybe 1150??) or amounts but I clearly remember thinking my oldest who had a 1250 math & reading/writing would have received something.
I tried to look out our high school’s Naviance to see if I could actually see something about this year’s data but I could not. I even called Rowan to find out merit levels for this year and the person I spoke was very kind but could not give me specifics because different factors are considered. So I really don’t know how we can actually get data for this year now.
I also really want to say that @NJRoadie and @NJWrestlingmom have been wonderful assets on this forum and extremely helpful to me personally in helping my D with her college search. Thank you, and warm hugs to you both this holiday!
I’m real glad about the info in this post. We were going to start summer classes at community college for my junior (rising senior). Our highschool doesn’t have many ap-classes and it would have been nice to have some of the non-essential classes taken care of early, like the humanities and social science.
If the above posts are correct; taking classes at community college in hopes of transferring credit would be a risk to merit aid award. As far as what caused this drop in aid, another reason might be that the previous merit aids posted in previous years have been depleted and those recorded awards were a result of the donation given by Henry Rowan. Not sure though, just speculation. I guess we’ll have to see more examples of posted awards for this year.
Thanks @MACmiracle! I’m glad I could help! Do you know where D is going yet?
I think I was thinking of my son’s Ramapo acceptance that said 1350 and higher? He had an 1150 and we got nothing from Rowan, but his GPA wasn’t great either. Thankfully he had a great first semester and is very happy there!
@NJWrestlingmom I’m glad to hear your S had a good semester!
My D has no idea where she is going and right now she says she doesn’t even care. She has felt ambivalent from the beginning and this semester has been tough because she got a concussion in October and the symptoms have really only started to subside in the last two weeks or so.
She has applied to about ten colleges. Several depended on competing for merit scholarships, but she has become overloaded and really just wants to be able to focus on her schoolwork. She has even cut down on her ec’s and took leave of her job until she is fully recovered.
I think she will definitely participate in the scholarship competition at Mount St. Mary’s, since she likes it so much, but otherwise I think she is done competitions.
She is also too burned out to complete essays for honors program applications but I will try to encourage her to do the one for Rowan since that will make a big difference in priority registration and housing. The others she can still do when things settle down. By then she might have a better idea of her preferences.
I’m fairly confident Rowan will come in with the lowest price but her award is being re-evaluated because her SAT increased 100 points from when she first sent in her app, so we’ll see.
If she would finish her Stockton application, the cost there would be even lower with the new SAT score, but that requires an essay…
The lowest cost private college is St. Vincent in Latrobe, Pa. I have to say they have been truly wonderful to deal with. They were so generous in compensating us for traveling out to visit and taking the scholarship exam. If it turns out D did well, we will have to go out and visit again since at that point the price would be similar to Rowan.
She also has to see how she does with TCNJ. For some reason, H really likes TCNJ, and for D’s area of interest, I think it’s really good. I am also hoping beyond hope for D to be invited to interview for a big scholarship at Elizabethtown because I just think that school knows what it’s doing in preparing kids for both careers and graduate school. And I love their genuine focus on service. So as you can see we are all over the place.
(4th child) I think the school just made a mistake.