Some Advice to those Seeking Scholarships

Colleges and Universities A-Z Indiana University - Bloomington
1

----RAISE YOUR GPA----

When it comes down to merit scholarship consideration, IU does not care about course rigor. They care about exactly 2 numbers: Your GPA and your SAT or ACT scores.

These are just for the scholarships that you get when you send in your standard application, but there are also many other scholarships available that require their own application, called the Selective Scholarship Application (SSA). It’s sent to you with your admissions letter, but is by invitation only. Not everyone gets it.

Using 4 students at my school who applied this year, I’ve discovered that GPA is incredibly important to how much money in scholarships they give you, to a MUCH higher extent than test scores. Here’s what I mean. The 4 student’s GPA’s, test scores, and the amount of scholarships received are listed, as well as whether or not they got the Selective Scholarship Application and qualified for entry into the Hutton Honors College.

Student A - 4.0 GPA - 2350 SAT - Full Ride Scholarship + SSA Invitation + Honors College
Student B - 3.8 GPA - 35 ACT - $8000/yr Scholarship + SSA Invitation
Student C - 3.6 GPA - 36 ACT - $1000/yr Scholarship
Student D - 3.3 GPA - 2300 SAT - Nothing

As you can see, all of these students have very high test scores, but have very different GPA’s. Only those who had a GPA of 3.8+ got the SSA invitation, and those below the 3.8 got much less in scholarship money.

The school these students attend is very rigorous. The valedictorian from 2 years ago skipped college because he had a job offer from Facebook. Around 5 students each year get sent to Ivy Leagues, and at least 1 has gotten into Harvard the past 7 years.

This proposes an argument that, if IU is your top choice, you should arguably transfer to a really easy high school and get a good GPA, as your SAT or ACT scores will likely stay the same no matter which high school you attend.

Personally, I’m most astonished that the 2300 SAT guy with the 3.3 GPA got no scholarship money. I know him, he was incredibly pissed off. He e-mailed the IU scholarship office, and they told him that this year was “especially competitive”, and that the GPA requirement for the SSA application and other automatic scholarships was “non-negotiable”.

Another thing to note is the Hutton Honors College. Only student A got in (met the minimum requirements) and therefore is eligible for some very good scholarships only available to Honors College students. However, people can send a petition to the Honors College to get in, but even if they do, they are NOT eligible for the Honors College scholarships. Student B has petitioned to get in to Hutton, and she likely will, but she won’t be able to get any of the Hutton scholarships.

I think it’s a dis-service to many kids. As a comparison, Student A got accepted to U Penn’s Wharton School early decision. He’s not even going to IU. Student B got into MIT, University of Chicago, and Michigan.

2

Thank you for the info. Do you know the magic formula of how IU re-calculates the GPA? Do they include only certain courses? Do they give any weight to honors or AP?

3

I have a 3.8 GPA (4.3 weighted), 2160 SAT, and am in the top 10% of my class. My school sounds similar to yours in that it’s a highly-regarded, competitive public school. While it’s true that my stats allow me into the Honors College automatically, by these standards I should not have received the $8,000/year and SSA invite that I did. I know one girl who received $1,000/year with a 2000 GPA, and a boy with a much higher GPA/class rank than me but a slightly lower SAT; he got $6,000/year.

While there certainly does seem to be some science to it, I don’t think specific benchmarks are laid out for every student, even for automatic scholarships. If it makes you feel better, the SSA didn’t help me at all but I know it’s because my essay for that specific app was sub par.

4

I actually found out the SSA invite stats from IU. I think it may vary by which school people applied to, but for Kelley it was a 3.8 GPA and 32 ACT/SAT equivalent (~1420 CR+M).

IU does not recalculuate GPA’s. They trust the high schools to have accurately reflected their students with their own GPA’s, weighted or not. So whatever is on your transcript is the GPA they use for all of this.

5

Did you find out about your scholarship upon admission or was it late in the year (March/April?)

6

@LuvMTs I was admitted in Late October, I got my scholarship and SSA app invite within a couple of weeks.

7

@Redados thanks! When did you get your actual award/amount of scholarship?

8

I got my Dean’s scholarship equaling $11,000 per year in like October or November, pretty soon after I applied. Got my SSA invite, filled that out in december, and on Wednesday, January 28th I receiver notice that got the Hudson and Holland Scholarship equaling $6,000 per year. I also got $1,000 for being a National Hispanic Recognition Program scholar on October 24th.

9

What is the SSA? Also, what do you guys think I would get if my GPA is 3.99 weighted, my ACT composite score is 32. I have been on varsity golf and tennis. I don’t know what my unweighted is, but I know it’s above 3.7. How much money for scholarships should I get, assuming I get in, and I would get into the Hutton honors college, right?

10

If IU does not recalculate GPA’s, then applicants like my daughter should have a field day. She’s in the IB program and had a couple full weight classes 9th and more in 10th, and 11th -12th is all full weight… So her (weighted) GPA ends up being some rather large number while the unweighted is more of what common mortals get… And neither one represents reality very well. The HS only reports one GPA, the weighted one.

She was invited to some big scholarship event on campus in May and we got the royal treatment, and we asked the same question, but it was very skillfully dodged.

Any ideas?

11

@turbo93 They don’t recalculate GPAs, and they will take the weighted one. They might also look at the transcript, but they definitely use the weighted GPA and do not recalculate

12

Hi does anyone know if merit scholarships are less likely for out of state students? We visited IU this past weekend and were very impressed. I’m assuming when previous posters listed an ACT score, they were talking about a superscore number since IU does superscore the ACT results.

13

In May we were on campus for some high achieving student scholarship invite and a good percentage were OOS’ers. IU has a good regional draw in places like Chicago etc it seems. A number of people had come from as far away as Texas and such.

14

@chris2 what schools did students B, C, and D end up enrolling in?