Just want to remind everyone picking schools and scholarships...

[Nan in Mass]

I just thought I,d remind everyone picking schools and scholarships that it is important to switch your mindset from "get into school" to "stay in school and graduate". These are very different things. Extra time is expensive. Some scholarships are difficult to keep.

 

It is important to check the academic structure of the school. Some schools are more hands on, some more theoretical. If you are a hands on type person that learns by doing, it can be a real slog if you never get to do labs or projects and apply what you are learning. If you are a theoretical person, the labs and projects can feel like they just slow you down. Some schools have an emphasis on group work and a sink or swim together policy. Some emphasize individual effort. Some are super competative and some more cooperative. Any of those can be very frustating and discouraging if they don,t suit you. Grading policies vary widely. Some schools have strict grading policies. Some no grades. Some have lots of oral exams or presentations. Some work just like public high school. Some scale widely. Some have lots of classes where the grade is based on only a midterm and final. Some base grades on assignments and quizzes. This varies from class to class, of course, but schools vary in their overall approach. Some schools make it easy to drop a class where you aren,t succeeding, perhaps letting you drop up until the final, where others make it difficult. Some schools are easy to flunk out of and others give you multiple chances. Some schools have lots of tutoring and some relatively little. How easy is it to get to the profs to ask questions? Are there many large lecture classes? Do those have recitations? Is the year broken up into quarters? Trimesters? Semesters? Semesters are easier for tortoises and quarters easier for hares. What about summer? Is it possible to retake more obscure classes then or do they only offer the most commonly flunked classes? Are there lots of requirements to graduate or relatively few? How easy is it to get into the classes you need to graduate? Is there a bottleneck class without enough sections that causes people to have to do a fifth year (expensive)? Are there lots of requirements that need to be taken in a certain order? What happens if you get out of sync? Are the required classes offered in both spring and fall? Do the required classes fill up fast? Is there a system in place for disputing grades? (Professors are human beings with a lot of power and all the normal human frailties.) Is there a capstone project or thesis requirement? Coop requirements? How hard is it going to be to get the grades you need to get into grad school? Will you be prepared well for grad school (since the object with grad school is to get through it, not just get in)?

 

It is important to think about all those factors in relationship to price. If the academic structure is such that you struggle and have to go another semester or year, it is going to be a large extra expense. It might make more sense to go to a more expensive college with an easier academic structure. LOOK AT THE TERMS OF YOUR SCHOLARSHIP OFFERS. A great scholarship that requires that you keep a 3.5 gpa is going to be hard to keep if the academic structure doesn,t suit you or the school is one where 4.0s are hard to get. Play around with some math and see what happens if you get sick and blow a final and get a 2.5 in one class. How do you repair the year,s gpa? If you mess up a year, is the scholarship gone forever? Can you get it back when you bring your gpa back up? Do you just lose part of the scholarship for that year or all of it? What happens if you get flu badly or you have a family crisis and need to take a semester off or withdraw part way through a semester? What happens if you don,t have a scholarship? How do refunds work?

 

Nan

[MysteryJen]

Awesome post, Nan. Thanks so much for taking the time to post this. This was absolutely a critical part of picking ds1's school. His merit aid was tied to satisfactory academic progress which allowed him to try hard things and not worry too much about GPA semester to semester. Dd1 is on a sports scholarship and we read that through and through. asked a ton of questions, but still have to ask about particular scenarios.

Ask every question you can think of and write the answers down. Get things in writing. Don't worry about looking foolish, there are thousands of dollars at stake.

 

[teachermom2834]

Agreed! One school I am familiar with requires a 3.7 to keep the top scholarship. If one chooses such a school they should at least consider what happens if they lose all or part of a scholarship.

 

My ds is at a school that has a core curriculum of cross discipline classes that really is hard to transfer out if need be. Not a deal breaker, for us, but the kind of detail to at least be aware of going in.

 

Good luck everyone!

[Nan in Mass]

...His merit aid was tied to satisfactory academic progress which allowed him to try hard things and not worry too much about GPA semester to semester. ... Don't worry about looking foolish, there are thousands of dollars at stake.

Youngest,s large scholarship is like this, too. Thankfully.

 

And good point about asking questions.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Agreed! One school I am familiar with requires a 3.7 to keep the top scholarship. If one chooses such a school they should at least consider what happens if they lose all or part of a scholarship.

 

My ds is at a school that has a core curriculum of cross discipline classes that really is hard to transfer out if need be. Not a deal breaker, for us, but the kind of detail to at least be aware of going in.

 

Good luck everyone!

That,s a good point - Think about what will happen if you switch majors or transfer. Will you have to switch schools to switch majors? An advantage of a large university is that you don,t. Will your classes transfer? (This can be a problem with some of the odder academic structures.)

 

Nan

[Lori D.]

Thankfully, DS's partial tuition scholarship was tied to GPA, but a MUCH more manageable one (I think it was 3.2 ??). AND it did NOT require service hours or hours spent on a special project, as some merit scholarships require (which makes them much more difficult to keep as the student gets squeezed for time). NOR did the GPA requirement on DS's scholarship go UP each year, as some merit scholarships do, making it ever-harder to keep the scholarship.

 

Definitely read the fine print on those scholarships!! 

Edited October 12, 2016 by Lori D.

[swimmermom3]

Of the eight schools ds was accepted to, six of the scholarships were tied to a 3.0 GPA. One of the schools that stayed at the top of our list until the very end, had no GPA requirement.  Their philosophy was that the student had earned the scholarship and that by not having a GPA requirement, the student was more likely to expand the scope of their studies and take a risk. The final school had the highest GPA requirement, 3.2, and of course the lowest scholarship. Of course, because we can never do anything like normal people, this is the one ds chose. :tongue_smilie:

 

The school offers Freshman Forgiveness:  "Degree students, during the first two semesters of full-time undergraduate study, may request Freshman Forgiveness for any two courses that have resulted in a grade of C- or lower.  Only the second grade is computed in the cumulative average GPA, but both courses remain on the transcript."

 

As Nan wrote in her excellent post, it's important to not only to keep your eye on the required GPA to keep a scholarship, but to know what the GPA requirement is in order to get in to grad school if that's a route you think your student wants to take. For ds, there is a BA/MA program that would allow him to share some credits between his BA and his MA. In order to get into this program, he needs to maintain a 3.5, not just the 3.2 for the scholarship.  This is his goal.  I will let you know how it all worked out in about three years since we decided to fly in the face of most of the excellent advice offered on the board when ds picked his school.