Methodology & Accuracy

Our one rule: colleges' own published pages only

Every award on this site is encoded from a college's own published merit grid or official scholarship page. We do not use aggregator-only figures, forum posts, or estimates presented as awards. If a college does not publish a grid, it does not get invented numbers.

Award classes — the label is part of the data

Every row in our dataset carries an award class, taken from the exact wording of the college's official page (we store the supporting quote with the row):

• Class A — Guaranteed automatic: the official page explicitly states the award is automatic or guaranteed for students who meet the published criteria. Only Class A awards may be called "guaranteed" anywhere on this site, and the calculator shows them as exact amounts.
• Class B — Automatic consideration: the college automatically considers students who meet the published criteria, but the amount is not guaranteed. The calculator shows Class B awards in a separate section labelled "Automatically considered — amount not guaranteed", and college and state pages put them in their own table with the same label. The word "guaranteed" is never attached to a Class B amount.
• Class C — Competitive: awards chosen competitively or holistically. Class C programs are excluded from the calculator and from award tables entirely.

A chart alone never makes an award "guaranteed" — if the official page does not say the award is automatic on meeting the criteria, the row is Class B at best.

Colleges that publish no automatic grid

Some colleges — including several Florida universities — award merit money without publishing an automatic grid at all. Those colleges get a different kind of page: it states plainly that the school does not publish an automatic merit grid, explains how its merit process actually works from the college's official text, and shows any published ranges only as ranges or typical figures, never as exact awards. These colleges never appear in calculator results.

Cost of attendance & affordability — estimates stay labelled

Where a college's published total cost of attendance (COA) is in our dataset, tools may rank by estimated remaining cost = published COA minus guaranteed award. The guaranteed merit figure is a verified number; the remaining-cost figure is an estimate derived from a published COA for a stated year, and it is always labelled as such — the two are never blended into one unlabeled number. For Class B colleges, remaining cost is shown only as a range or omitted, never as a single exact-looking number. Where COA has not been captured yet, our tools say so plainly instead of estimating it.

What every figure carries

• Official source URL (the college's page)
• Verification date — when the page was last checked
• The source quote supporting the award's classification
• GPA, SAT, and ACT minimums exactly as published (blank means the grid does not publish that test)
• Amount per year, renewable years, and the derived 4-year total (per-year × renewable years)
• Published conditions where the college states them: GPA basis, test-score basis (single sitting vs. superscore), entry term, application and score deadlines, renewal GPA, full-time requirement, stacking limits, residency, and whether a separate scholarship application is required

How qualification is calculated

GPA must meet or exceed the published minimum. For test scores: GPA-only awards need no score; if both SAT and ACT minimums are published, meeting either counts; if only one is published, that one controls. Residency is applied from the home state you enter (in-state / out-of-state / both). Results are then split by award class — guaranteed automatic awards as exact amounts, automatic-consideration awards as possible figures that are not guaranteed.

GPA scales — recorded as published, never converted

Most colleges publish GPA thresholds on a 4.0 scale. Some publish them on a 100-point scale (thresholds like 89–96). We record each grid on the scale the college published — every row in our dataset carries its scale — and the calculator asks which scale your GPA is on. An award can only match a GPA entered on the same scale; we never convert a GPA between the 4.0 and 100-point scales, in either direction, because colleges do not publish a conversion and any conversion we invented would be a figure we made up.

What this is not

Meeting a threshold does not guarantee admission, and colleges can change or end grids at any time. Renewal usually requires maintaining a college GPA and full-time enrollment — read the official source. Need-based aid is outside this calculator's scope.

Corrections

If a figure disagrees with the linked official source, the official source wins. We re-verify rows on a rolling basis and update the verification date when a row is re-checked; rows that can no longer be verified are removed, and pages backed only by removed rows are removed with them — no thin doorway pages are kept for traffic.