'You've Earned It' scholarships raise GPAs, SATs

By Kara Swarbrick
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Norwich University has developed a new program called "You've Earned It," which, according to Karen McGrath, dean of enrollment management, includes academic honors and merit scholarships that take 50 percent off tuition costs for incoming freshmen.

The catch: those who qualify must have graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class. But there is also scholarship relief with one-third of the cost off for freshmen who graduated in the top 11 to 20 percent of their class.

"One of the first goals of the new long-range program is to enhance academic quality and public recognition," McGrath said. "Through creation of this program we were able to grow the number of new students coming from the top 10 and 20 percent of their class."

Kyle Sweitzer, assistant director of student financial planning, stated that the new scholarships "have attracted quite a bit of attention to our school, and we've gotten better applicants because of it (along with) a lot of media attention."

Sweitzer said the average SAT scores and the average high school GPAs of the freshman class have been raised with the addition of the academic honors and merit scholarships.

According to McGrath, these scholarships can be kept as long as the students receiving the 50 percent scholarships "maintain a 3.0 or a B average" and the students receiving one-third off "maintain a 2.75 GPA."

McGrath also stated that offering these scholarships would assist in bringing academically stronger students to Norwich, which will "help build our reputation and our future and, in theory, really help work on retention."

While these new scholarships benefit the incoming freshman class, upperclassmen aren't left out.

"We have other merit scholarships, and we have lots of need-based grants and endowed scholarships," McGrath said, "We have corps and civilian merit scholarships that go to incoming freshmen through seniors and fifth-year architects."

There is an abundance of scholarships out there which are available and open to all students.

Some of which, McGrath mentioned, include the community service, Partridge, Dewey, and Dodge scholarships. "There's a number of endowed scholarships," Sweitzer said. "The criteria for those scholarships are usually set by the donors, but sometimes they leave it up to the discretion of the school."

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