Show HN: Calculate full scholarships available based on your grades
collegemerit.com
collegemerit.com
Granted I graduated over a decade ago, but I recall scholarships not generally being tied to either grades or test scores. Many public universities will grant automatic admission based on those (and a few years back I got to write a calculator that compared universities in a region based on their standards for that), but scholarships seemed to be very rarely awarded based solely on those factors.
(during my own school search I went through multiple on-site scholarship-application programs, which typically involved analyzing my full high-school transcript, followed by on-site interviews and exams tailored specifically to the school)
Please keep toxic comments like this as far away from Show HN as possible.
However, this tool is a good way of ensuring that you have free options (if you have the grades).
Edit: Replying to ubernostrum's comment below:
Based on the data given, I left out a few schools that required a particular school rank, and Utah State, which is a more complex case (http://www.usu.edu/admissions/scholarships/nonres-freshmen.c...).
I double checked the data, and while a few of the scholarships are first come first serve, none of the websites indicated that there was an additional competitive process involved.
If I wanted to be more comprehensive, I would include National Merit status, and perhaps schools that are free to everyone. But as it is, I believe I have a first pass at "full scholarships that require certain grades and test scores but do not require any additional process."
Like I said, I once was tasked to write an admissions calculator. This was in 2006, and was for the (at the time) member schools of the Big 12 Conference:
* Texas, Texas Tech and Texas A&M looked only at class rank, with automatic admission to the top 10 percent.
* But Baylor looked only at SAT or ACT score.
* Nebraska would admit based on a flat minimum in any of class rank, ACT score or SAT score.
* Colorado had a flat minimum to satisfy in any of class rank, ACT score, SAT score or GPA.
* Kansas and Kansas State could look at either SAT score or ACT score, or a combination of GPA and class rank.
* Oklahoma and Oklahoma State would use either a combination of GPA and class rank, or an ACT score plus a GPA and class rank, or an SAT score plus a GPA and class rank.
* Iowa State University had automatic admission based on any of six possible combinations of class rank, GPA, SAT score and ACT score.
* The University of Missouri had eight possible combinations.
Assembling the calculator for that required getting information from each of the 12 universities regarding their official admissions standards.
This site tries to calculate automatic scholarship awards based on unofficial sources. Please forgive me if I have concerns over whether the data they have is correct or they've been able to capture the full range of possible options (or whether there really are consistent automatic scholarship-award tiers in the first place).
Also, imo this explains why the University of Alabama has been attracting so many amazing people the past 6 years^. They implemented an automatic qualifying scholarship at least that many years ago (presidential) in addition to probably the best national merit scholarship in the country (free tuition, iPad, $1000 stipend per year, $2000 for summer research or study abroad, 1 year of free housing, not to mention your college will probably give you another scholarship)
But then again this just shows automatic scholarships I guess. Otherwise other universities make more discretionary decisions.
^ bias, I went to school there in that time frame.
Also when I failed the validation the values I entered disappeared which is a bit frustrating.
Since I'm not American and don't know what the score ranges should be, can you put a little tooltip or addendum to explain the test and what it's scored out of?
I was interested in poking around to see if I would have scored scholarships anywhere in America if I input similar grades to what I achieved in Australia but the lack of usability made me quit.
The SAT has three subtests with scores ranging from 200 to 800. Scores are multiples of 10.
The ACT has a score from 1 to 36.
You only need either an ACT or SAT score.