Texas Tech National Merit visit report

[Bristayl]

I posted this on College Confidential, but thought I'd post here, too, since there was some recent discussion on another thread about Texas Tech's National Merit scholarhip.

We did a National Merit visit at Texas Tech this week with my D and I wanted to share some of the info we learned about their National Merit Scholarship, which is super generous.

The scholarship covers full Cost of Attendance (currently $25,776) for eight semesters. They take out tuition, fees, room, and board, and the rest is refunded to the student to use toward books, transportation, and personal expenses. If I've calculated correctly, the refund right now would be $5,620 for the year. The scholarship will increase along with any increase in the COA.

If the student moves off campus (freshmen are required to live on campus), then they take out tuition and fees and the rest is refunded to the student to pay for their off-campus housing and food.

If the student does study abroad during the summer, they will cover that expense in addition to the eight semesters of scholarship.

The website says that a scholarship student must take 15 hours per semester, but what it doesn't say is that AP and dual credits can be applied each semester to bring the total to 15. So the student could take fewer classes each semester and then add in credits from high school as needed.

A 3.5 GPA is required to keep the scholarship, but there is a one-semester grace period if GPA falls below that. If the GPA falls below 3.5 in any future semester, the scholarship will be lost, but nothing will need to be paid back. The National Merit coordinator said that so far they have not had anyone in danger of losing the scholarship except one boy who thought he didn't need to actually attend classes.

We asked whether a student could apply remaining semesters of the scholarship toward graduate study if he/she took fewer than eight semesters to graduate. They said right now that is not possible, but they are working on making it possible as early as next year. The student would have to do their graduate study at the university, not, for example, at the nearby Health Science Center.

Our National Merit visit was very well organized and we were treated like VIPs. Students drove us from one appointment to another, and also took us on a driving campus tour (we did walk through a few buildings such as the library and rec center). D had an appointment with a biology professor and the Dean of the Honors College, and we had lunch with a current student. All of the students who took us around were current National Merit scholarship recipients, so we got to ask them lots of questions.

There are lots of opportunities for undergraduate research and when the Honors College Dean learned that D is already doing undergraduate research at the university where she is dual-enrolled, he offered to set up meetings for her with several professors during her first fall semester, so that she could jump right into a research lab her first spring semester. Undergraduate research can be done for credit or pay ($8.00/hr). The pay for undergraduate research is in addition to the scholarship.

We also toured the new Honors dorm which just opened this year. It is "pod-style" (you'll have to look at the layouts on the website to understand what that means!). The majority of the rooms are double rooms, and eight rooms share a single-gender community bathroom. There is also a single bathroom in each pod that is gender neutral. Rooms have their own thermostats. 

My D did not particularly like the climate of Lubbock, but all in all, we were very impressed with the opportunities that Texas Tech has to offer. 

I should add that DD is a junior but since she should qualify for Semifinalist this fall, they still gave her the full National Merit treatment.

[Lanny]

Thank you for that great report!  Lubbock is great for Astronomy and other things, if she should decide to become a Red Raider.