Scholarships/admissions changes due to COVID

[teachermom2834]

I’ve been waiting for an announcement on changes to automatic scholarships for our state flagship my rising senior plans to attend. They announced a week ago that they are going test optional (except homeschoolers).

I wondered how that would change the automatic scholarship structure. They announced today that the automatic scholarship amounts and test score cutoffs are the same but students have until July 2021 to submit their best scores for scholarships. Previously the December test was the cutoff.

If the student chooses test optional they will be evaluated for the same scholarship amounts as the automatic scholarships on the basis of their transcript and extracurricular activities. This might have been better for my Ds but as a homeschooler he doesn’t have this option. I guess a student could apply under this option, find out what scholarship amount they got, then take the ACT through July to try to increase it? Not sure. 
 

I don’t think any of this makes much difference to my ds situation but I was wondering how they would handle it and I thought it was interesting. The good news is that the scholarship he already has the test score for did not decrease. 
 

Will be interesting to see how different schools handle the testing and financial complications of the pandemic.