By JOSHUA HINTON & BENJAMIN KLIEWER, Senior Reporters
One would assume a student with a 3.75 GPA and a 27 or higher ACT score would have bountiful scholarship opportunities at Oklahoma State University.
However, for sophomore creative writing major Corben Horton, who has a 3.8 GPA and a 31 ACT score, the only scholarship he received from the university is the President’s Distinguished Scholarship. The scholarship is a four-year cash award of $2,500 per year. The university automatically awarded the scholarship to Horton as an incoming freshman.
One can look at Northwestern’s scholarships all day, but unless other universities’ scholarship processes are compared to Northwestern’s processes, a fair judgment of Northwestern scholarships cannot be made. That’s what this story aims to offer.
Oklahoma State automatically considers incoming freshman and transfer students for all university-based scholarships after processing the students’ applications. These include departmental and general academic scholarships.
The university automatically re-enrolls continuing students for general academic scholarships and sends out renewal forms for departmental scholarships, said Chad Blew, director of scholarships and financial aid at OSU.
General academic scholarships: OSU
OSU offers multiple academic award scholarships. Six types of academic awards are university-assured scholarships. One academic award scholarship is based on GPA only, with the other five based on GPA and ACT or SAT scores combined.
The university has two scholarships that are university-competitive, with the President’s Distinguished Scholarship being a four-year cash award and the President’s Leadership Council Scholarship being a one-year award.
Of the eight scholarships, the lowest cash award is $750 per year, and the highest is $2,500 per year.
In the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021, OSU paid around $115 million in scholarships, with around 10,000 students receiving some form of internal scholarship, Blew said.
“[With] our scholarships, we tend to focus on students with financial needs,” Blew said. “There’s also an academic component, and we have plenty awards that are focused on high merit. But being a land-grant institution … our mission is access, so we do factor heavily in financial need for a lot of our programs.”
The university does not cap student scholarship money, but when committee members award scholarships, they try to spread them out to reach as many students as possible, Blew said.
“My office does the majority of scholarships … but then the college’s [departments] do each have a significant amount of scholarships themselves that they award,” he said.
Departmental Scholarships
Departmental scholarships at Oklahoma State have three different application processes depending on grade level. For example, the Spears School of Business automatically applies incoming freshman for departmental scholarships when they declare a major on their application, said Angela Jungermann, the scholarship coordinator for Spears School of Business. Students going into their sophomore, junior or senior years fill out a short application with no essay required. Graduate students fill out a scholarship application with an essay required.
The Spears School of Business has roughly 5,000 undergraduate and graduate majors, with 40-45% of continuing students reapplying for scholarships. Thirty-three percent of the students who reapply receive some form of scholarship. The highest individual scholarship is $14,000, and the lowest is about $240.
“When I have a student come in and ask what they can do about their scholarship, I tell them we have what I consider four main criteria,” Jungermann said.
The four most common criteria from donors are GPA, financial need, leadership and participation. There can also be unique criteria specific to certain scholarships, such as the student being from a military family, Jungermann said.
The Spears School of Business does not have an official cap on scholarship money that a student can receive. However, the scholarship committees attempt to award scholarships to as many students as possible, Jungermann said.
There are around 150 to 200 scholarships available for the school of business, but the department can award some scholarships to multiple students. Students have opportunities to earn more scholarships throughout the year.
“Throughout a school year, we might have things like business competitions, where a scholarship is the prize,” Jungermann said. “For the current school year, we [the department] gave out about 1,200 scholarships.”
As of fall 2021, OSU had 24,660 students enrolled. The estimated tuition and fees for in-state students is $13,920 annually.
In comparison, Southwestern Oklahoma State University had 4,644 students enrolled in the fall of 2021.
The estimated tuition and fees for in-state students is $9,331 annually.
Southwestern Student’s Experience
A Southwestern student, who asked to remain anonymous, said she has a 3.7 GPA and has taken part in several extracurricular activities on campus.
The student received two scholarships in her freshman year but has not received any scholarships since despite applying four times.
“They told me, when I asked, that the scholarships go by area,” the student said. “Some are specifically for Texas people or Panhandle people.”
The student said when she reached out, there was only one departmental scholarship available for their major.
General Academic Scholarships: SWOSU
Southwestern offers internal academic scholarships for incoming freshmen and transfer students.
Students are automatically considered for academic scholarships when Southwestern accepts the students. Scholarships for freshmen are based on GPA and ACT or SAT scores. Transfer student scholarships are based on GPA.
Sheila McGee, a scholarship councilor, said continuing student academic scholarships are being phased out because the freshmen and transfer student scholarships roll over each year for continuing students.
Four different scholarships based on GPA and ACT or SAT can be awarded to multiple students. The scholarships range from $1,000 to $7,500 per year.
Southwestern has a scholarship cap for students who receive federal aid, and the cap is set at the cost of attendance.
“That [cost] is a number each school comes up with,” McGee said. “That is an average cost for that particular school but includes things that are not immediate expenses.”
If a student does not receive federal aid, the cap does not apply.
Scholarships aside from general academic scholarships are available through the Southwestern Foundation and Alumni Association and individual departmental scholarships.
Foundation Scholarships
The foundation gave $921,771 in scholarships to the university in 2020, said Robbin Jennings, the programs officer and office manager for the Southwestern Foundation and Alumni association. This included athletics, retention and recruitment scholarship support.
In September 2021, the foundation awarded 311 students with non-athletic scholarships.
Southwestern students complete one application that makes them eligible for a majority of the scholarships. Incoming freshmen with fewer than 12 concurrent credit hours must fill out the incoming freshman scholarship application. Freshmen with 12 or more concurrent credit hours must fill out the general scholarship application. Some scholarships available for freshmen have donor-specific requirements that have a separate application process.
“The school sends out an email to faculty and students with links to the scholarship application,” Jennings said. “I speak to high school counselors regarding scholarship applications.”
On average, a student gets awarded one foundation scholarship. The university and individual departments can also award scholarships on top of the foundation’s scholarship.
Departmental Scholarships
Southwestern offers departmental scholarships to provide additional help with tuition and fee cost.
Erik Hawkins, administrative assistant of the Dobson School of Business and Technology, said Southwestern makes a scholarship application available each spring semester for the business and technology school that covers three departments: business, computer science and engineering technology.
For the 2022 spring semester, Southwestern has 526 students enrolled in the business department. About 50 students have applied for scholarships for the fall 2022-2023 school year.
“If we have the funds available, I anticipate that we will be able to award 100% of the applicants for the upcoming academic year,” Hawkins said.
The Dobson School of Business and Technology awards one scholarship per applicant. The money granted per scholarship depends on the available funds per year. No participation scholarships are available at the department level.