Academic Scholarships

It's going to vary from school to school. My daughter was NHS, had a unweighted 3.8 and over 2,000 on her SAT's. She got a four year 50% academic ride contingent on maintaining a 3.0 gpa. Depending on your financial situation there's also financial need money.

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RRF8,

You have a PM.

The answer to your question will also depend upon whether it is a public or private institution. In general, private institutions tend to give more merit based aid than public universities, at least in my area of the USA.

I would suggest you look at what the college reports as their 25%-75% ACT or SAT score. It is likely if your son is above their 75% number that he will qualify for merit aid. The higher he is on that scale, the more merit aid will be awarded.

Of course, not all institutions offer merit aid at all.

Lots of good answers so far. We just went through this with our daughter (non-athlete) and went through it with our son 3 years ago. One thing we found is that for some reason many schools (public and private) are getting away from merit based aid altogether.

Frankly, we were shocked. Daughter had a perfect score on the SAT and near perfect grades and the "offers" ranged from 50%-75% at public schools to 100% at some private schools. (Note these figures INCLUDE lottery scholarships, which in SC cover aprox. 25-35% of total public college costs).

As someone else pointed out, some private schools (like Wofford and Furman in SC) have big endowments and will make very good offers. If you have GREAT SAT's and grades these offers may be close to %100%. If you have VERY GOOD SAT's and grades you may be looking at 50-75%. But, with tuition at $40,000 to $50,000 a year, you might do better financially with a 25-50% scholarship at a public school.

AGAIN, this all varies a LOT from school to school. Some very prominent schools don't give merit based awards at all anymore.

Frankly, we found this all a bit disheartening. The payoff for busting your butt in high school is not always as great as you might think.



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quote:

Originally posted by RRF8:
I am reaching out to all of the parents who have kids who hit the books. What class rank, or Act score does a student need to get a significant (75% -100%) tuition scholarship at a D1 university? I would be interested to hear any success stories.

As everyone has said, it's going to vary from school to school, but just some generic numbers to throw from schools we learned in SC...its usually in the range of top 5% of your class and 1400+ (math/reading) on SAT or 30+ on ACT to garner any merit scholly attention from the school (honors college).

Interesting article in ESPN magazine regarding college baseball scholarships:
http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb...story%3fid%3d6066085

Frankly, we found this all a bit disheartening. The payoff for busting your butt in high school is not always as great as you might think.



I disagree, busting your butt in high school gets you accepted into the schools that offer GREAT FA.

Another thing that we learned along the way was that the major chosen can affect scholarship money. Son's SAT & grades were excellent, but not quite as high as sister's, yet he got something like $2500 more in scholarship money because of the particular program/major he was accepted into.

We also learned that in most cases getting accepted into Honors Colleges does not result in more academic money.

In most cases good students will still get more academic money that athletic money, but high academics are not rewarded to the extent that you might think. (Again, with the exception of some of the academic oriented private schools)

quote:

Originally posted by scdigger:
As everyone has said, it's going to vary from school to school, but just some generic numbers to throw from schools we learned in SC...its usually in the range of top 5% of your class and 1400+ (math/reading) on SAT or 30+ on ACT to garner any merit scholly attention from the school (honors college).

quote:

Interesting article in ESPN magazine regarding college baseball scholarships:

Darn insider...can't read the article unless you're a subscriber.

quote:

Originally posted by MTH:
Another thing that we learned along the way was that the major chosen can affect scholarship money. Son's SAT & grades were excellent, but not quite as high as sister's, yet he got something like $2500 more in scholarship money because of the particular program/major he was accepted into.

We also learned that in most cases getting accepted into Honors Colleges does not result in more academic money.

In most cases good students will still get more academic money that athletic money, but high academics are not rewarded to the extent that you might think. (Again, with the exception of some of the academic oriented private schools)

quote:

Originally posted by scdigger:
As everyone has said, it's going to vary from school to school, but just some generic numbers to throw from schools we learned in SC...its usually in the range of top 5% of your class and 1400+ (math/reading) on SAT or 30+ on ACT to garner any merit scholly attention from the school (honors college).

Agree 100%, if a school needs to fill a major the offers tend to get much better.

First of all Financial Aid encompasses more than just Merit/academic based aid, which was the original subject of this thread.

And as I pointed out earlier, many of the smaller niche schools are more generous with merit based (and need based) aid than most of the bigger universities. But not everyone wants to go to a small liberal arts school. Daughter turned down a full ride one of those schools to go to a larger school that presented many more options, and which offered her the least money of any school she applied to. I'm sorta wondering about the validity of that math SAT score ;-)

Again, there is tremendous variation here. And I am certainly not arguing against max effort in HS academics, because for most academics will still result in more academic aid than athletic aid. My point is the amount of academic aid is frequently less than you would think.

quote:

Originally posted by ken:
Frankly, we found this all a bit disheartening. The payoff for busting your butt in high school is not always as great as you might think.



I disagree, busting your butt in high school gets you accepted into the schools that offer GREAT FA.

You are correct, It seems the line has been blurred between academic aid and finacial assistance.