Retaining the Scholarship
An important purpose of the science scholarship is to provide students with sufficient money so that they can concentrate full-time on their schoolwork. If students work full-time on school, they probably will have no trouble meeting the requirements to retain their scholarship.
The specific requirements for retaining the scholarship or renewing it each year are:
• completing a minimum of 24 credits during the fall and spring semesters each year (i.e., maintaining full-time status);
• completing courses in the major as recommended by the USSP advisor(s);
• maintaining a minimum cumulative overall grade point average of 3.00 and a major GPA of 3.25.
Students will not be allowed to work during the school year except under rare special circumstances. Employment must receive the approval of the director of the Science Scholars Program. Employment and wages could jeopardize the student’s eligibility for financial aid based on their financial need. Moreover, work could jeopardize a student’s academic progress and retention of the scholarship. A common problem with students who are not fortunate enough to receive much financial aid is that they have to work too many hours and they try to maintain full-time status. As a result, their grades suffer, they have to make up or repeat courses in the summer, and they often drop out a semester to work; thus, it takes them much longer than four years to complete a degree and they often have bad grades on their transcripts. Our limitation on outside work by USSP students is to prevent overcommitment by students that leads to poor academic achievement and delays in finishing degrees.