How common is it to lose merit aid?

[Anonymous]

My dc has gotten several offers from colleges with merit aid. They, of course, all have gpa requirements to maintain (3.0 or 3.2). Dc is planning to major in engineering and I'm concerned about him maintaining the gpa for merit aid. I went to a big state univ and I recall many engineering students did not have a 3.0. In fact, 3.0 was considered really good. And even if they graduated with that, there were certainly years that it dipped lower. I don't want to send him off to private school and then be stuck paying $70k the next year because he lost his merit aid. How common is this? Anyone have any experience with this?

[Anonymous]

My kid lost his full tuition scholarship. He just didn’t study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his full tuition scholarship. He just didn’t study.

That's leartning a lesson the hard way.

[Anonymous]

My kid lost his merit aid but wasn’t a great student. If your kid is a good student and mostly got As in high school hopefully he should be fine. Talk to him about it.

[Anonymous]

Mine lost her merit 3rd year during a hard year of nursing clinicals. She's a great nurse but certain sciences were very challenging for her. We paid for the 3rd year and she took out loans for the last year. What sucks is you can't get it back when you dip back up. At our large state school at least.

[Anonymous]

I lost my merit aid freshman year. First semester I was above required GPA. Second semester I was a (very) little below. If they had averaged the two I would have been fine, but they didn't. At that school, National Merit finalists would have been put on probation, but I wasn't a finalist.

Anybody can have a bad semester. I would strongly advise people to understand all the terms of merit aid packages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his merit aid but wasn’t a great student. If your kid is a good student and mostly got As in high school hopefully he should be fine. Talk to him about it.

My kid got nearly all As in high school.

She is now in a big ten engineering program where she is above average according to the admission stats. Her merit aid continuation requirement is fairly low (good standing).

She is currently a B+ student (thank you, humanities elective!) with mostly Bs in her technical classes. Statistically she is well into the top half of the class but not in the top quarter -- she and I looked carefully at the distribution statistics for each class.

I'm telling you this detail because although I would like my kid to have done better, she is proud of her effort and her grades. I would not be confident that a freshman engineering student would do much better after watching my child this past fall. Maybe your kid will, but you aren't worried about that here.

She will get into her major, and she will keep her merit aid. We turned down other schools where these kind of grades might not have resulted in that outcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his full tuition scholarship. He just didn’t study.

That's leartning a lesson the hard way.

It was a hard lesson but he got what he deserved. He learned his lesson so it wasn’t a complete loss.

[Anonymous]

call and ask. call the director of undergraduates in your kid's expected major.

ask this question point blank and don't send your kid anywhere where you don't have the answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his full tuition scholarship. He just didn’t study.

That's leartning a lesson the hard way.

Wow wow wow

What did you do?!?! How did your family handle that situation?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his merit aid but wasn’t a great student. If your kid is a good student and mostly got As in high school hopefully he should be fine. Talk to him about it.

My kid got nearly all As in high school.

She is now in a big ten engineering program where she is above average according to the admission stats. Her merit aid continuation requirement is fairly low (good standing).

She is currently a B+ student (thank you, humanities elective!) with mostly Bs in her technical classes. Statistically she is well into the top half of the class but not in the top quarter -- she and I looked carefully at the distribution statistics for each class.

I'm telling you this detail because although I would like my kid to have done better, she is proud of her effort and her grades. I would not be confident that a freshman engineering student would do much better after watching my child this past fall. Maybe your kid will, but you aren't worried about that here.

She will get into her major, and she will keep her merit aid. We turned down other schools where these kind of grades might not have resulted in that outcome.

May I ask which Big 10 Engineering gives merit aid, please? And did that bring your out of state tuition to your state flagship? Thank you.

[Anonymous]

A couple years back, our DC got merit aid offers at 8 different engineering schools.

One required a 1.0 GPA the first semester to keep aid. Then a rolling scale up to a 2.0 after 5 semesters until graduation.

Most required a GPA of 2.0 with allowances for lower semesters with compensating higher semesters, but getting a 3.0 freshman year after getting a 1.0 is a lot of pressure so really it is close to a 2.0 every semester.

A couple were 3.0 to keep ALL the merit aid but allowed you to keep some/most of the aid if you were "in good standing" that is a 2.0.

DC really took this into account when choosing their school but has yet to have a semester GPA below 3.2

DC has corrupted one of the school's motto to read, "You are paying a lot of money so, go to every possible class, do all possible work, ask for help often: everything will work out."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I lost my merit aid freshman year. First semester I was above required GPA. Second semester I was a (very) little below. If they had averaged the two I would have been fine, but they didn't. At that school, National Merit finalists would have been put on probation, but I wasn't a finalist.

Anybody can have a bad semester. I would strongly advise people to understand all the terms of merit aid packages.

+1 Same thing happened to my straight A brother. He did badly in some pre-med electives (physics, organic chem which have low curves) and lost his funding. My parents were livid, because he had gone to this much lower tier school because it was cheaper, and he had gotten into far better schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid lost his merit aid but wasn’t a great student. If your kid is a good student and mostly got As in high school hopefully he should be fine. Talk to him about it.

My kid got nearly all As in high school.

She is now in a big ten engineering program where she is above average according to the admission stats. Her merit aid continuation requirement is fairly low (good standing).

She is currently a B+ student (thank you, humanities elective!) with mostly Bs in her technical classes. Statistically she is well into the top half of the class but not in the top quarter -- she and I looked carefully at the distribution statistics for each class.

I'm telling you this detail because although I would like my kid to have done better, she is proud of her effort and her grades. I would not be confident that a freshman engineering student would do much better after watching my child this past fall. Maybe your kid will, but you aren't worried about that here.

She will get into her major, and she will keep her merit aid. We turned down other schools where these kind of grades might not have resulted in that outcome.

May I ask which Big 10 Engineering gives merit aid, please? And did that bring your out of state tuition to your state flagship? Thank you.

It brought tuition pretty close, but transportation is more expensive.

[Anonymous]

My DSS (STEM major) lost his merit aid at the end of his first year. We agreed to a more expensive private school b/c his aid offset the costs and equaled full pay at one of our state schools. But he was the type in HS who had to be ridden to keep his grades up, and shockingly when we weren't there in college, he slept through classes, he didn't study or keep up, etc.

But he was on the road to dropping out anyway, he had been moving towards a different path. In the end it worked out, he has the different career that motivated him to work to achieve, bought a house quite young, married and started a family, and is happy as a clam.