<p>Hi, My son was just admitted to Alabama University. His GPA is 3.5 and ACT is 27, what kind of aid do you think we can expect? We don't qualify for Financial Aid. He applied to the engineering program. Also, this is his first college admission, when does the aid package come? Any scholarship tips, or general process tips are greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>You might ask this on **The University of Alabama **forum.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-alabama/</a></p>
<p>We don’t qualify for Financial Aid.</p>
<p>Are you instate or OOS? </p>
<p>Did he submit the scholarship app before Jan 6th?</p>
<p>If he submited his app by the deadline, then for his ACT 27, he’d get:</p>
<p>$3500 per year from the school</p>
<h2>$1500 per year from eng’g.</h2>
<p>$5,000 per year as an eng’g major.</p>
<p>The scholarship letters should come soon.</p>
<p>Did you submit FAFSA for financial aid? If so, then he’ll get a $5500 student loan as well if you want it.</p>
<p>He is OOS, he did submit it before January 6th, and yes we submitted FAFSA. Can you negotiate and try to get more $$$? Thanks</p>
<p>Can you negotiate and try to get more $$$? Thanks</p>
<p>What would be the basis for the negotiation?</p>
<p>How much do you need?</p>
<p>While your son has fine stats, they’re not high for the school. The top quartile at Alabama has an ACT 31+. </p>
<p>Test scores within the upper quartile are highly desired by schools that give good merit. Merit is awarded to high stats students because their scores help the school’s profile and ranking.</p>
<p>Where did he apply? What is your home state?</p>
<p>If much larger merit is what you need, did he apply to any schools where his ACT 27 would be within the upper quartile?</p>
<p>[Out-of-State</a> Scholarships - Undergraduate Scholarships - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html]Out-of-State”>http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html)</p>
<p>That’s what I thought. Just not sure how merit works, trying to see how much $$ he qualifies for. Home state is NJ, he applied to Rutgers, Olin, RIP, NorthEastern, Clemson, North Carolina State, WIT. He is really into Robotics, so also appying for First Robotics scholarships.</p>
<p>How much merit do you need?</p>
<p>Just not sure how merit works,</p>
<p>Merit is used by “merit giving schools” to capture the students with the highest stats to push up their reported quartile numbers. </p>
<p>So, the more high stats students a school can get, pushes up their reported quartile numbers. </p>
<p>That’s why you’ll see merit awards really jump in size for scores that are well-within that Top Quartile. </p>
<p>Several years ago, Bama’s upper quartile was around an ACT 28+. At that time, Bama was giving full tuition for an ACT 28 to instate students. OOS probably needed an ACT 30. After awarding large merit to those who had these higher scores, Bama was able raise its upper quartile to an ACT 31+. That’s a significant increase. Now Bama requires an ACT 32 for full tuition scholarships. </p>
<p>The plain truth is: Schools don’t give merit “to be nice guys”…they give merit to students whose stats really help the school “look good”. </p>
<p>??
What was your son’s SAT score? (Math + CR)</p>
<p>*trying to see how much $$ he qualifies for. *</p>
<p>Off-hand, I don’t know what the upper quartiles are for those schools that you listed, but I think that they’re all above an ACT 27. I’m guessing that they all are about an ACT 30+. Is that right? If so, then merit wouldn’t be likely.</p>
<p>What is your budget? How much do you want to spend each year? </p>
<p>Does Rowan have eng’g? If so, would he get merit there?</p>
<p>so also appying for First Robotics scholarships.</p>
<p>How much are those?</p>
<p>I thought he was ChemE. Is he MechE?</p>
<p>Perhaps mom2 can answer this. If this student retakes the SAT and/or ACT and improves significantly, will Alabama reconsider the merit award? </p>
<p>To the OP, OOS costs are going to be high. Private school costs are going to be high. I hope there is a guaranteed affordable college on your son’s application list.</p>
<p>The last testing date for the SAT and ACT was in Dec for this year’s seniors.</p>
<p>Did this student take the SAT?</p>
<p>Do you actually need merit for him to attend, or would it just be nice to have the extra money? This is too late to help you, but the best time to look into merit is before applying, especially if your situation is the former.</p>
<p>You first check the university’s main scholarship page. They often have a page devoted solely to general scholarships for incoming freshmen. Some have very detailed requirements to get into the pool, or as for UA, to get automatic $$. At others it is a bit murkier, but there is always some kind of info and one can contact the scholarship office to obtain more specific guidelines. There will usually be some merit that is awarded ‘holistically’ and some that is purely stats driven. Some money may be earmarked for instate, intl., particular low-income school districts, etc., so need to pay attention to that. Then you poke around in eng. dept. site to see if they have any good info about their departmental scholarships, and contact them as well if needed. </p>
<p>This will help with making the college list if you don’t qualify for FA but merit is essential for school to be affordable. Eg, for your son’s stats, UAB would have given automatic $12K/yr + possibly more from eng. (up to $4,500/yr.)</p>
<p>I can’t say if he qualifies for any holistic money at the schools he applied to. Does he have some high-level awards in robotics, or other ‘hooks’? </p>
<p>To look at a couple of his schools’ stats based merit:</p>
<p>Rutgers-for general freshman scholarships, the lowest level is ‘Scarlet.’ Minimum 30 ACT to be considered. </p>
<p>NEU-for gen. freshman scholarships, top 25% of applicants are ‘considered’ for merit awards including primarily stats based Dean’s of $5-25K/yr. So you need to determine where S falls in applicant pool. Universities often have ‘fact books’ or data listed in tables online in admissions or elsewhere. If not, look through their Common Data Sets when they are public, scrounge info from collegedata et al, or call/e-mail and ask. Collegedata suggests that 29 is break for lowest quartile of enrolled freshmen. Those numbers are generally higher for applicants than enrolled, so he definitely is in bottom quartile for tests. For grades, I don’t find the exact data as they left that blank on CDS, but over 60% enrolled are in top 10% of their class, so 3.5 GPA is probably also rather low for NEU. You can use this kind of info to evaluate chances of admission as well as scholarship chances.</p>
<p>NCSU has no specific guidelines for their stats merit awards, but according to collegedata, 27 is avg. enrolled and top quartile breaks at 29. 50% enrolled were in top 10%of class. Their CDS lists GPA ranges, but they include weighted, so not very informative. They give 75 freshmen engineering scholarships of $2-5K/yr, though didn’t try to find data on # of freshmen in program. In general, one can expect engineering applicants will have higher stats than the general applicant.</p>
<p>I see Olin has a very nice FIRST scholarship, but as you probably know, that is a super-super high reach for your S. His GPA is in the bottom 3% and engineering’s bottom quartile ACT breaks at 33. Only 3% have ACT at or below 29.</p>
<p>Those First Robotics Scholarships are hard to get at most schools. S1 was a NMF, 35 ACT, Val of his engineering hs, had great recs. from his First coach and teachers, but did not get the $10,000 scholarship at the school he applied to which offered it. There was only one scholarship at that school and many applicants. Now if his team came in one of the top places in nationals (maybe even regionals) and the school didn’t have many applicants, there might be a chance. (One of the kids in the year before my son was in First was noticed by an engineering professor at the competition which did lead to a scholarship.) I would definitely encourage your son to apply but my advice is not to count on it too much.</p>
<p>Thank you this is very helpful- his SAT score for Math was 610, English 510. He can attend, the extra merit money would be nice, don’t want to take a lot of student loans out. He is great with computers and Robotics but thinks he wants to go for chemical engineering, we’ll see.</p>