Reply to What are the best Merit (not need) Based School Scholarships?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have an SAT verbal/or math subscore of 700+ and hope for merit aid at schools ranked below the top 50. Our preference was National Universities ranked by US News.[/quote]

Good grades in high school not only matter when applying to college, they’re also an indicator of a student’s performance in college.  The report finds college and university cumulative GPAs closely track students’ high school grades, despite major variations in standardized test scores. If a student consistently does well throughout high school, that is a bigger gauge of their performance in college than comparative SAT and ACT scores, the NACAC reports

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2014/03/03/gpa-vs-sat-scores-which-is-more-important/[/quote]

That recent study has been quoted widely, but few realize that it deliberately went beyond the most selective schools and looked at outcomes at a wide variety of colleges.  The study looked at students with very low GPA’s (under 3.0) and very low test scores.  Completing college was considered a successful outcome.  The study is interesting for what it reveals, but it has little relevance to the issue of distinguishing among top students.  In selective schools, you need BOTH a strong GPA and strong test scores.  With regard to GPA, the fact remains that there is no standardized GPA.  That’s why some admissions officials consider GPA as a number meaningless.  In context GPA has great meaning, but colleges have to find a way to normalize GPA.  Each college has algorithms to normalize GPA’s from different schools, so the key is what that college thinks of your school.

When it comes to merit aid or admission to selective schools, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for elite colleges to disregard standardized tests.  To the contrary, US News just INCREASED the weighting given to test scores and DECREASED the weighting given to students in the top 10% of HS class. 
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