How selective are UF’s merit scholarships for OOS and how many students usually get selected for them?
Looks like my S21 also shut out of any merit as he didn’t receive any emails today. Anyone know if not getting selected for honors affected the merit awards? Or are they two totally different selection processes?
Oh well! Congrats to all who got honors and/or merit!!
Separate. Last year my son did not apply to honors and received Presidential scholarship.
Recieved the maximum out of state “Gator Nation” scholarship but rejected from honors. How does that work
Different selection committees, therefore, different results.
I guess my essays must have been terrible then
The 20k scholarship is NO joke for a ‘terrible essay’ 
Congratulations!!!
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Wow. Just received the Presidential Platinum scholarship ($10k/year), on top of Benacquisto… and was rejected from Honors. Not even upset - just very strange. I guess one group of readers didn’t like my essays and another group did?
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Do they stack? I’d imagine we would get a maximum of Cost Of Attendance from Benacquisto and the merit scholarship would cancel
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Just replied to your comment in the other thread, but yep, it stacks on top of Benacquisto!
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They do.
You cannot receive more than full COA from the school. Sometimes it happens when local scholarships are involved, but the school has rules against financial aid above full COA.
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You are telling me they are essentially paying me 20 grand a year to go to one of the top schools in the country? While I would love to be proven wrong I can’t imagine this is true.
Yes, you are correct.
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Knew the Benaquisto party wouldn’t last long. Very few if any schools outside of FL still give full rides for NMF.
The honors program is not stats driven. You can almost assume all regular admits (not athletes, not special circumstances) are qualified for Honors by stats because it is so hard to get into UF and there are many many many vals and sals and perfect 4.0/1600/36 for the Honors program to choose from.
Honors admissions is judged by other honors students, based on essays and what they like. In my opinion, it’s like a job interview and the hiring person is looking for themselves in the applicant. Worked his way through high school and still got a 3.8? Good. Was on the MUN team? Just like ME! Wrote an essay about training guide dogs for the blind? Oh, I like that. Very much a case that almost every applicant is qualified, so which do they take.
The UF official admissions website states that “UF’s Presidential scholarships will ‘stack’ on top of Bright Futures and the Benacquisto Scholarship offered by the Florida Department of Education.” (That’s a direct quote.)
Given that Benacquisto is a COA scholarship by definition, I see no reason that they would write that unless they do give us the Presidential money in addition to COA.
(However, it does say that out of state scholarships don’t stack on top of Benacquisto, so if that’s what you received that might be the case.)
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I suggest you email and ask. There is other contradictory/ambiguous language on the very same page under I Am A National Merit Scholar. If I recall correctly, the COA limit is federal law.
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I would hope a state university wouldn’t be paying students money above the cost of attendance…much better use for those funds.
I think that is only for some federal grants like Pell. Benacquisto students often get a check back if they have other scholarship/prepaid money. They might not get a Pell grant if all their scholarships come to more than the COA. Football players get a full scholarship plus a stipend. They then can’t get a Pell grant on top of it, or they might be able to get the Pell but not the stipend (take whichever is more).
How the BF funds are used, and I assume the Benacquisto since they come from the same agency, can be restricted by the college. My daughter’s college required BF to be used for tuition only. It couldn’t be used for room and board, for study abroad, for fees or insurance. Other schools allow BF to be used for any of those things or refunded to the student. The schools can choose to stack scholarships, use BF first, do whatever they want.
I’m pretty sure all the big publics allow the student to choose what to do with the funds as long as the bill is paid. Most allow instate students to use their Prepaid before BF, thus causing an overpayment and refund to the student of the entire BF/Benacq.