Chances for Presidential Scholarship

cdkmom
Tue, 18 Feb 2014 20:23:14 +0000

Just wondering if anyone in the past has received or heard of someone who received a full tuition scholarship if they failed to get the Presidential Scholarship. My S did not feel well on the day of the PSAT and ended up falling 3 points below where he needed to be to qualify for NMF. (We’re in one of the states that has a high cut-off.) He then took the SAT shortly after and scored a 2300+.He’s also in the top 1% of his class. I’ve heard that a few non-NMF’s get the Presidential, but I know the odds are kind of against you if you aren’t. My S has a good resume with solid EC’s, tons of volunteer hours, and has taken nothing but the most rigorous classes all throughout HS. He also competed at the State level in an individual sport for the past 3 years along with being captain of that team since he was a sophomore, which is very unusual at our HS because almost all team captains are seniors. He also wrote what I thought were outstanding essays and I assume his rec letters were good. He loved his day-long visit to the campus but we really can’t afford to send him to a private school unless he gets something close to full tuition. And financial need aid won’t help us because we are in that middle class trap where our EFC (IMO) comes out WAY higher than we can actually afford.