4.0 and Institutional scholarships

Seems doubtful. Our D has about the same GPA (and a 1520 SAT) and just got a $27k scholarship from this same school. Schools establish hard cutoffs usually on merit to preserve the sanity of admissions staff - so that they do not get caught up in negotiations on the topic with multiple parents. (Unlike need-based aid, which is given out by Financial Aid Offices, merit aid is awarded by admissions staff at nearly every school. Admissions is so swamped that schools do the best they can to keep them insulated from $ dialogs with parents…). Don’t mean to be discouraging, just trying to give you a reality based answer.

Financial aid would potentially give more money (in grant form) if your EFC (the measure they use for ability to pay) is low enough. But it would not be based on GPA if that makes sense.

In our case, fortunately, she loved University of Arizona when we visited recently, and they gave her basically free tuition. (Your daughter’s GPA will recalculate as 4.0 in Arizona based on their methodology). That gives us a for sure option for regardless of how she does on offers from the various private schools she has applied to. But USF is definitely out of the running for us at this point.

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