The easy way to calculate your scholarship

Are you preparing your student to be strong academically? That's a good strategy, since most colleges offer excellent scholarship monies based on a combination of grades and scores on the college entrance exams. In fact, you'll find that many college scholarships describe - almost word for word - the same criteria. Something like:

Scholarship amounts based on a combination of GPA and ACT or SAT scores.

Many times the scores they're looking for are not published. This is frustrating (to say the least) for those of us trying to see exactly what is required!

Just HOW hard do our students need to study?

Just WHEN shall we say the ACT score is high enough - or should we encourage our student to study and prepare and take it just one more time?

It certainly would be helpful to know just what score each school requires!

If you haven't already checked out the Big Figure Scholarships database, you may want to do so now. This is exactly what the database provides for paying members - a list of scholarships sorted by various criteria, such as minimum ACT scores, GPA scores, etc.

One thing we've found on many, many college websites now is a Scholarship Calculator. It really is a wonderful way to see what the "combination of GPA and ACT or SAT scores" means.

For example, an ACT score of 27 with a GPA of 3.5 may be what you're looking for. But what if that GPA is just not quite high enough? What if your student just couldn't pull an A in Chemistry, and the GPA is only 3.3?

That's the beauty of the Scholarship Calculator. By punching in various scores, you'll find out that - just maybe - a GPA of 3.3 will still allow you to be eligible for the scholarship if you can pull the ACT score up to 29.

Many colleges now are providing such Scholarship Calculators. For example, you might try these:

Bowling Green State University in Ohio

University of Mobile, Alabama

And here's really cool calculator with a growing, colorful graph:

Judson College in Alabama

A word of warning: Be careful to read what being "eligible" means. In some cases, your student may automatically be granted scholarship money based solely on the scores listed on the calculator. Other times, it simply means he or she is eligible to apply. Or perhaps meeting the score requirements means an invitation to the Scholarship Competition, at which other criteria are examined.

At any rate, the Scholarship Calculator is a simple way to see how close your student is to becoming eligible. And it will assist you in planning a strategy over the next year or so to increase the scores he needs to win the college scholarship!

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Need some guidance in developing your student toward becoming that candidate colleges are pursuing? See what our scholarship preparation program can do for you.