<p>Hi, I am hoping someone can clear up a question my daughter has about bright futures renewal.</p>
<p>My daughter is eligible for the Florida academic scholars award which requires a cumulative 3.0 GPA in order to be renewed.</p>
<p>She was dual enrolled in physics last year (really bad idea -- she signed up for AP and it was switched to DE several weeks into the year) and she has ended up with eight dual enrollment credits with a grade of "C".</p>
<p>We are wondering if those eight hours will be factored into her cumulative GPA at the end of her freshman year at FSU for bright futures purposes. The BF website states:</p>
<p>"A student may request that a financial aid officer at the home postsecondary institution use high school dual enrollment courses, if these courses are to the student's advantage, when calculating the renewal postsecondary institutional cumulative GPA."</p>
<p>This sounds to me as if the DE credits won't count unless a student wants them to. However, my daughter just returned from orientation and has been a basket case ever since -- apparenlty some of the sessions she attended told horror stories about the amount of hours a student must study in order to not "crash and burn." She is wondering if she should sign up for a few extremely easy electives to ensure that her GPA stays above a 3.0. </p>
<p>We will call BF next week, but maybe somebody has some experience with this?</p>
<p>It is my understanding that only the FSU GPA is used for maintaining Bright Futures, and only courses taken during fall and spring go towards maintaining the 3.0 GPA, especially since the DE credits were already on the books at the time the Bright Futures was initially awarded.</p>
<p>I think that if you bring in DE credits or take summer CC credits, and after you are at FSU your GPA drops below 3.0, you can appeal and ask that the others be used to bring up the GPA if those DE credit would do so. But I am 95% certain that it is the classes taken AT FSU for spring and summer that have to be a 3.0 or better. </p>
<p>The BF criteria just underwent BIG CHANGES so I am no longer 100% certain. But I am 95% certain. So call, but I would relax until then. It is a good idea to consider only 12 hours for fall, first on campus full college semester, then the usual 15 in spring. You only need 24 per year to maintain BF eligibility, and this still allows a cushion in case of the need to drop one class.</p>
<p>That seems to confirm my impression as well. I think her concern is that she would pretty much need to make a 3.5 next fall to correct for the C in physics. She’s a great student and never made below a 3.5 (unweighted) in any high school semester, but the C in physics has totally shaken her confidence. Fortunately, she isn’t majoring in physics.</p>
<p>I’ll give you a non horror story. The only people I know that finished with less than a 3.0 last semester are the ones that didn’t go to class and/or got wasted on school nights. If your daughter attends class and tries, she should finish with over a 3.0.</p>
<p>Additionally, assuming those credits do count (I don’t believe they do), she would need a 3.27 on a 30 credit schedule to up her overall GPA to a 3.0. I don’t believe she’d have a problem attaining that, but there’s definitely some gimme classes she could take which would help her cause that also satisfy requirements. CGS 2100 (Computer Literacy) and BSC 1005 (Baby Bio) come to mind.</p>