I’ll be talking to the FA offices at the schools I’m interested in directly about this BUT, just so I have an idea of what to anticipate…
If I am awarded a merit based scholarship at a college I applied at - say, $10,000 for having a gpa of 3.4 at the time that I applied - is there a chance that they would increase it upon me sending updated transcripts? For example: I get my gpa above 3.5 (which I fully anticipate to happen) and they offer $11,000 for 3.5+ students, is there a chance that I would get that aid instead?
You need to contact the specific college(s). They will tell you their policy.
It is not unheard of for schools to go either way on this. Some will automatically adjust based on the final transcript, others may say it is locked in at the time of acceptance. All will be happy to explain how the handle this. Congratulations and Best of luck to you!
Is it an automatic merit scholarship?
When my daugther first received her merit award, the letter specifically said if there was a change in gpa or test scores the award could go up or down. I think the last test dates accepted were for February, but the gpa was the final one at graduation.
It depends on the policy of the school and/or the scholarship. My son’s merit award came with clear guidance and specifically said it was for a set amount only. Sorry, but there’s no answer other than “it depends.” It looks you’ll have to do quite a bit of legwork to get a fair comparison of each college and/or scholarship. Good luck!
A specific merit scholarship may or may not be fixed for the duration of your academic career at the school. Most colleges offer additional departmental and other merit scholarships which can stack on top of your original award…which is effectively an increase in your merit award, just allocated from multiple funds. These extra awards are often a thousand dollars or so, but they can sometimes be substantially more.
I like these as they can reward students who maybe didn’t have the high school stats to earn big merit but who turned on the steam in college.
Additional merit scholarship is different from an increase in the scholarship that has been already offered. My D got additional departmental scholarships from sophomore year on while the renewable scholarship never change. The departmental one she applied every year is bigger for upperclassmen.
Thanks everyone – I figured that there would be one, universal, answer, but it was still helpful to hear of your experiences. I’ll get in contact with my prospective colleges and find out about their individual policies!