Will poor rank ruin merit chances? - Page 2

sally305 · 10-07-2012, 09:57 AM

^This is exactly right. For many colleges, the stated tuition is like the sticker price on a car--it is just a starting point. Giving kids a little something in the way of merit money makes them feel wanted and special (which of course is generally a good thing). In our experience, a meaningful merit award was one that reduced the cost of attendance to less than the price of our state flagship (meaning, in most cases, that it made the COA half or less of the stated price). To be offered such substantial awards, a student generally has to be at the very top of the score/GPA range.

SteveMA · 10-07-2012, 10:52 AM

None of the schools our kids applied to (20 between the 2 of them) use class rank for merit scholarships. They have all been based on test scores and GPA a couple have required an extra essay or an activities chart but none have asked for class rank.

mom2collegekids · 10-07-2012, 11:11 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by mom2collegekids
ahh....but doesn't UPitt require HIGH stats for good merit? Not sure what your D's stats are, but if you need merit to make UPitt affordable, then if she doesn't have high stats, UPitt may be moot. Aren't you OOS for UPitt so the cost would be $40k+ per year?

Sylvan reply:
One of S's friends got an OOS scholarship last year with stats similar to D's, but not sure if they have changed policies since then. Not sure where he was ranked though.

Do you know how much this was for? Was it related at all to his major? As you say, policies do change from year to year. Is this student a current sophomore at Pitt?

UPitt can be very unreliable with merit awards. There have been many discussions about this. Entomom was disappointed that her high stats D didn't get the merit that they had hoped for. She saved the response she got from Pitt after they had asked why her D didn't get the higher desired merit amount. I think she got a merit award, just not the amount that they hoped for.

The upper quartile for UPitt is ACT 31+. I don't know what your D's stats are, but if they are well within the upper quartile, it would seem that she has a decent chance at merit.

how much merit do you want? Enough to get cost equivalent to an instate SUNY ( would SUNY COA be about $22k??)

mom2collegekids · 10-07-2012, 11:16 AM

My DD has a low rank as well - top 40% with a 3.6 GPA. So far she has received anywhere from $2,500 to $12,000 per year. She has a 25 ACT. Doesn't seem the rank is hurting her. But I also think they are looking at the high school she is in (private catholic). We are waiting on the acceptance and award from her top choice school, so fingers crossed they too won't weigh the rank so much.

Go to Collegeboard and put in the "top choice" school's name and look at the middle range quartiles. If your D's ACT puts her in the top quartile, and the school does give merit scholarships, then she'll likely get a nice one. If her ACT is in the middle range, she may not get anything or may get a small one. Of course, if the total cost of the school is high, a small one will hardly make a dent in the price. :/

mamadubbs brings up a good point. Students attending private schools often don't have the rank that they might if they attended their local public. It's not unusual for high stats kids to not have "top 10%" rank at private schools. In a state like Texas where rank is used to guarantee UTexas admittance, it's a problem.

SteveMA · 10-07-2012, 11:20 AM

mom2collegekids--our kids would most likely have a HIGHER rank at any of the private schools around here because they are easier than our public schools. This isn't a private/public thing, its a quality of the school issues. Heck, our kids would have a higher rank in just about any other high school in the nation...which is why class rank is meaningless to most colleges for this.

Most colleges that offer automatic merit awards have some kind of metric on their websites that show what award you will get with what GPA/test scores. Check the actual school site to see what they offer. For the few schools that didn't have that information on their websites, it was supplied in the materials given to us on visits or even at a college fair. If you are really concerned, call the financial aid office at the school and ask.

sally305 · 10-07-2012, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Students attending private schools often don't have the rank that they might if they attended their local public.

This can go the other way too, if the publics are better than the privates (as is the case where we live). Again, our school doesn't rank, but it routinely turns out the most NMSF and perfect SAT/ACT scorers in the district, if not the state. Something like 40 kids in my son's graduating class of 550 or so had a perfect 4.0 GPA, too.--which is probably why ranking wouldn't make a lot of sense.

SteveMA · 10-07-2012, 11:31 AM

sally305--I look at a school with 40 kids with 4.0's and think the opposite of you, why aren't they challenging those kids if that many students have a 4.0??? We have about 550 kids in our graduating classes as well, 50 of those kids were NMSF or commended. We generally have a dozen kids or so with perfect test scores on at least one test, usually ACT and over the past 8 years or so have had about 2 kids/class with perfect ACT and SAT scores. One year we had 2 kids with 4.0's, last year there were 5--all friends that made a pact that they would all graduate from high school with 4.0's. This year. like most years, we will have one with a 4.0, but only through hours and hours of homework--her ACT was a 24, so not a "natural" student. Most of the top 20% of the kids scored 32 or higher on their ACT's, yet none of them have a 4.0. I would be pretty upset if we had that many kids with a 4.0 quite honestly.

sally305 · 10-07-2012, 11:51 AM

Hmmm. I think most of the kids with those grades at our school ARE being challenged--taking advanced classes, pushing themselves hard, and going on to great colleges. We live in a university town and our school is where many professors and other highly educated people send their kids, so it's not representative of most places. There is a fringe group of super-pushy parents who claim that their brilliant offspring are not being challenged enough, and have sued the district to offer them more. I think that is actually ridiculous, as most of these under-challenged kids are already going on to very desirable colleges. Not to mention, there are far more kids at the "bottom" who need more help than those whose parents have the time and money to support them. So no, I don't care one way or another what GPAs kids have. It's a small issue in the greater scheme of things.

mom2collegekids · 10-07-2012, 12:11 PM

our kids would most likely have a HIGHER rank at any of the private schools around here because they are easier than our public schools

Maybe that does happen regionally. However, when you have a good private school that doesn't admit a good number of students that a public would HAVE to admit, then that means that the lowest deciles at the private will contain better students than higher than the lowest deciles of the public.

Another factor can be class size at privates. Class sizes at privates tend to be a LOT smaller. My older son's senior class had less than 50 students. The #6 student in the class had a 4.4 GPA and wasn't top 10%.

blueiguana · 10-07-2012, 12:41 PM

It is a misnomer that colleges that consider rank are blind on this with high schools that do not report it. On the Profile the hs must send with the transcript for each applicant the GPA spread, grading scale, etc., as well as that students GPA is listed. From this the school can extrapolate rank if they choose to use it in admissions. I follow an admissions rep on twitter who specifically commented on this last admissions season. It just gives them more math to do.

Having said this, usually merit is a function of where you fall in the application pool. As M2CK states, the higher you fall the more likely you are to receive merit (if awarded at that school). If you are looking for merit, target schools where your GPA and scores put you in the top 75th percentile. Your rank isn't going to hinder this.

DeskPotato · 10-07-2012, 02:00 PM

This might not help at schools that do their merit awards strictly by the numbers, but I have read from an admissions officer who posts on College Confidential that they might give a kid a pass on a rank outside the top 10th if they get the impression that it is a particularly strong graduating class that year, and that another year the same transcript would have put the kid in the top tenth. But they base that, I think, on their knowledge of the various schools.

That particular school doesn't award merit scholarships; the discussion was about admissions.

I think rank is a really frustrating parameter to deal with. I understand that it's important for the admissions committee to have some sense of whether a particular transcript represents outstanding or run-of-the-mill achievement in the specific context of the school. But it's something the student can really not control. It depends on who else is in the class and what those kids choose to enroll in and how hard they choose to work. And also, how many other kids there are! My high school graduating class was <150. You had to be one of a tiny handful to be top 10th. As a practical matter, anything other than straight-A's was likely to knock you out. My daughter's graduating class was >350. Maybe there were 35 kids with straight A's, I honestly don't know. And at a tiny prep school, you might have a class of 35 all of whom were as qualified as the top tenth of my daughter's graduating class. Who knows.

I don't think a kid with top grades and a challenging schedule is rendered less impressive or less qualified by the presence of half-a-dozen other kids with MORE challenging schedules. It just creates an insane arms race that's simply not necessary.

But it seems to matter to schools because they like to report what % of their admitted students are ranked in the top tenth of their graduating classes. That seems to be a magic number.

Mom24boys · 10-07-2012, 03:09 PM

Rank is the weak point of my sons application and one of the reasons he will be visiting Alabama next month. He is a NMSF (1600/2320 SATs), weighted GPA 4.25 unweighted 3.75 plus one A in CC not included in transcript or rank but ranks outside 10%.

I have found this very frustrating since the county next door no longer ranks and rank is only reported here once (October senior year) so it is hard to figure rank into the college search. The reason he is outside of the top 10% is a few B's freshman year and taking honors or grade level English (he worked up to honors junior and senior year).

He really liked Pitt and has applied, school won't process any transcript request until October, so we are waiting for them to be processed so we can send them to all the Nov. 1 and rolling schools. I am very thankful to schools like Alabama who are straight forward about merit aid esp. for kids outside the "magic" top 10%.

tk21769 · 10-07-2012, 03:28 PM

Here are some private colleges that award relatively generous amounts of merit aid:

American ..... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Not Considered" [in admission])
Brandeis ...... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Very Important")
Case Western (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Very Important")
Davidson ...... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Considered")
Furman ....... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Important")
Grinnell ....... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Very Important")
Richmond ..... (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Important")
Rice ............. (CDS/C7: Class Rank is "Very Important")

If class rank is a significant factor in admission, I would consider it a factor in merit aid awards (if only indirectly).

sylvan8798 · 10-07-2012, 03:42 PM

Maybe it's because I've been sick, but I feel very dejected about all this. We could be looking forward to a fall with a lot of disappointment and one more-difficult-to-live-with-than-usual teenager.

sally305 · 10-07-2012, 04:55 PM

Don't feel dejected. Just clarify your strategy and get everyone to hold hands and agree to it. That means X number of schools, with Y number in each category of reach/match/safety. If your daughter says "there is no way I would go to school Z even if it was the only one I got into," don't make her apply. Likewise, if there is a school she likes but there is no way you will allow her to go to/pay for, don't get her hopes up--tell her now. Do your homework on the score ranges for the schools you are seeking merit aid from. And for God's sake, do not make her apply to any more schools than she has to--I would say 10 is all most people can handle, and for some that's too many. Even with the Common App, there are still supplements and individual requirements (and schools that aren't using the Common App) and all the scores and letters to send--it is exhausting even before FAFSA/CSS season starts.

If possible I would make sure your daughter does a couple EA applications, so you will know before the end of the year that she has some options. Honestly, this is exactly what we did and we were the least stressed-out family of anyone I know. And that is with an incredibly laid-back kid, an ex who works in higher ed and Knows Everything, and a stepmother weighing in with her opinions too. All our friends wanted to know what our secret was as they were pulling their hair out and fighting with their kids over the holiday break. By then, it was too late.