I got an email yesterday, accepted for Industrial Design
accepted on Wednesday for film with a presidential scholarship. 1450 SAT and 4.0 WGPA.
@filmlvr, my daughter got accepted to industrial design but nothing was mentioned about scholarships. should I assume she will not receive any scholarship since you immediately received notification about your scholarship? I donât think she will be able to attend Pratt without scholarship money. We donât qualify for financial aid.
@Katflea my daughters scholarship was also in the acceptance letter, so unfortunately your assumption is probably correct.
@Katflea The scholarship email came after the acceptance email, and both letters were in the mailed packet. If you havenât received the mailed packet yet, wait and see if itâs the packet. Check your spam folder, too, just in case.
My daughterâs email came immediately after her acceptance letter. She received a $17K Presidential scholarship. I think that her SAT scores brought her down from top tier 
Although I am grateful, sadly, this wonât come close to being enough for Pratt. Itâs especially sad because both my husband and I graduated from Pratt, worked in the advertising industry for years, and he was even an adjunct professor there for a couple of years. Such a bummer
thank you @mommek3 and @Graphitemovermom. we havenât received the packet yet, just the email. my daughter checked spam and junk mail and there was no other email from Pratt aside from the acceptance email. May I ask what your kidsâ stats are? what constitutes a merit scholarship at pratt? information on website is limited. Iâd appreciate your insight
@Katflea My sonâs SAT was 1330, and Weighted GPA 3.5. Extracurriculars: Marching Band, Boy Scouts (Eagle Scout), Graphic Design Club, National Honor Art Society (Secretary). Strong portfolio but not top tier (if you use the link below, you can get to the estimated scholarship calculatorâŠand based on the above numbers, my son would have had to get a â3â for portfolio, on a scale of 1-4 to get the amount that he did).
https://tcc.ruffalonl.com/Pratt%20Institute/Freshman%20Students
Thank you so much @Graphitemovermom for sharing your sonâs stats. I used the calculator you provided to assess the estimated scholarship and it returned âcongratulations! you qualify for a presidential scholarship!â My daughter as a weighted GPA of 3.4, ACT score of 23 (slightly above national average but not impressive), tons of ECs (competitive soccer athlete for multiple years, Scholastic National Award winner 2019, honor roll, owns own photography business, volunteer at Nursing home), and attends a private high school known for a tough academic curriculum. very disappointed she didnât receive anything about scholarships yet
well, i think I just figured out how merit scholarships work. while I think merit does play a huge role in receiving a scholarship (the Pratt scholarship calculator is based on merit), i do believe it has a lot to do with what Pratt thinks your family can afford. So if you have the same stats as another candidate, but your family earns more money than the other candidate, then they will give scholarship money to the family that earns less.
@Katflea curious how you came to that conclusion? My daughter received $27,000/yr. merit 4.0 gpa 32 ACT. Very good portfolio. Household income $225,000. EFC 35000 (2 in college). Sometimes it just is what it is and not worth trying to figure out.
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@Katflea If you continued with the calculator after seeing the estimated scholarship, there is a financial aid calculator that shows you what you could qualify for in aid. I believe they do this in that order to see how much financial aid would be necessary beyond the scholarship. My son qualified for no other aid because we also have a high EFC (though I am still appalled by that number FAFSA gave us because thatâs just impossible what they think is an estimated family contribution). Some of the schools he applied to gave him an average of 1K need-based aid in addition to some sort of scholarship (ranging from 8K to 16K) and some schools gave him nothing beyond a scholarship, and one school gave him no scholarship with no need-based aid (itâs an in-state school) and one school gave him 16K scholarship with 13K need-based aid (that was RIT and I think they are desperate for students because itâs a very depressing campus). It almost seems random across schools how much they give students. If you think there was an error made, it couldnât hurt to call up the school and ask if your daughter had received any scholarship. But I would wait to get the packet first and see if the letter is in there.
@Katflea I guess all your questions for me have been answered. Iâm sorry to hear your daughter wouldnât be able to go without the scholarships and financial aid. Thatâs really terrible. It would be great for you or your daughter to do what @Graphitemovermom said and email them saying maybe they made a mistake. I know of a few stories of people emailing colleges about their admissions decisions saying the admissions people made a mistake and their file was reviewed again. It canât hurt to try. Hoping for the best!
@mommek3, @Graphitemovermom, and @filmlvr
I want to thank all of you for sharing your insight and experiences. I learn more from the parents about the admissions and financial processes than these colleges. Truly valuable! I did reach out to the financial counselor at Pratt and confirmed that we only received $1000 in grants, no scholarship, and approximately $70K in loans. She referred me to someone else in admissions to discuss the scholarship because according to the calculator, my daughter qualifies for the Presidential Scholarship at $21K. This will make a huge difference in her ability to attend Pratt. I just cannot visualize close to $300K in loans for an unpredictable future in art/design. It is common for med/dental school students to carry these loans, and Iâve read horror stories of graduates from Pratt, RISD, SCAD, and others who are riddled with debt and struggling in their careers. I am in the tech industry and my clients are execs and middle managers at Pixar, Dreamworks, Weta, etc and I have learned that you truly have to be the top in your field to make the income equal to some of the middle managers in tech. Unless you are a Johnny Ive at Apple, it will be very difficult to make an income high enough to pay back exorbitant loans. Anyway, our EFC is 69, so very high. This is our first one in college. We had tough times in prior years so did not save a penny for college. When I reflect on how hard my daughter has worked over the years, it pains me to think we cannot afford to send her to Pratt unless she is awarded a scholarship. Thank you so much for your insight! I will let you know how it goes with the admissions counselor. Hoping the outcome changes for us because there is certainly a discrepancy between the results of the scholarship calculator and what we received ($0). Many thanks!
@Katflea, same here. DD got $28000/year. Our EFC is about $54000.
BTW, it has been 10 days since we received the email. Anybody got the official package yet?
@BaobeiDad i got mine in the mail yesterday
@BaobeiDad Son got his packet on Monday, but weâre in NJ, so weâre fairly close to the school.
Well, spoke to admissions counselor yesterday and confirmed my daughter did not qualify for any scholarships. Very disappointing! Scholarship over $20K would have enabled her to attend Pratt. Congratulations to all of your kids on receiving the scholarships! Great achievement!
Sorry to hear @Katflea. Hopefully your daughter has some great acceptances to choose from. My oldest daughter could not attend her first choice due to cost but is so happy where she is she now couldnât even imagine going there. They wind up where they are meant to be.
I donât honestly believe GPA or test score significantly impacts on the admission decision or scholarship. My daughterâs GPA and SAT are not comparative at all⊠3.2 GPA, 1160 SAT. She got accepted to Pratt with a presidential merit scholarship, $22000/year. Household income $160,000. EFC 37000. She applied for early action. She also got accepted to Parsons and SAIC with a similar amount of merit scholarship. early action as well.