Blue & Gold Merit Scholarships
The UNCG Blue & Gold Merit Scholarship is awarded to academically talented high school students who are admitted to UNCG for a summer or fall semester. Applicants will be automatically considered as long as they submit their undergraduate admission application by January 15th.
When merit scholarship recipients are selected, they will receive a letter from Undergraduate Admissions. The scholarship offer letter contains award information as well as details about the terms of the scholarship. In particular, awarded students should note whether their UNCG merit scholarship is a renewable award or a one-year nonrenewable award.
Newly admitted students must submit Intent to Enroll by May 1st in order to accept a UNCG Blue & Gold Merit Scholarship offer.
Eligibility for merit scholarship Funding
The Blue & Gold merit scholarship is only available to students for the semester to which they were admitted. (In the event that a student opts to defer admission or delay their enrollment for one or more terms, they will not qualify for the Blue & Gold award once they enter their future enrollment term.) Students must enroll in at least 12 credit hours during both Fall and Spring semesters to receive funding. Funding for these awards is not available for Summer semesters.
One-Year Nonrenewable MERIT Awards
Students who receive one-year nonrenewable awards are receiving one-time awards only. Accordingly, these awards are not renewable for additional semesters.
Renewable Blue & Gold MERIT Scholarship Requirements
Students awarded a renewable award are eligible for up to 8 consecutive semesters of eligibility. Semesters include Fall and Spring semesters. Non-enrolled students or those enrolled in less than 12 credit hours in a semester are no longer considered eligible for Blue & Gold Scholarship. In some cases, a student may be unable to enroll, or may need to enroll in less than 12 credit hours due to extenuating circumstances. In this situation, a student may submit an appeal for an exception. Please refer to the Appeals Process section below for details.
To retain eligibility for a renewable Blue & Gold Scholarship, students must meet certain renewal criteria for UNCG and for the specific type of Blue & Gold scholarship being received. UNCG’s renewal criteria are listed in the next section.
Additional criteria are based on requirements of the funding source. These additional requirements (if any) will be disclosed on the student’s initial Blue & Gold Scholarship offer letter received from Undergraduate Admissions prior to enrolling for the first time.
Semester-based requirements
There are two criteria that are evaluated every semester:
Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) standards: SAP standards are evaluated at the end of each semester. The SAP policy can be found here.
Academic Standing: Academic Standing is also evaluated at the end of semester. Academic Standing statuses of Academic Suspension and Academic Dismissal will result in loss of eligibility. The Academic Standing policy can be found here.
Students are notified of failure to meet SAP or Academic Standing through those respective evaluation processes.
Annual requirements
In addition to the end of semester evaluation, there are two additional criteria that are evaluated at the end of each spring semester and take into consideration progress over the Fall and Spring semesters combined.
Enrollment requirement: Students must have enrolled in a minimum of 12 credit hours in both Fall and Spring.
Minimum GPA: Blue & Gold Scholarship recipients must maintain a minimum of a 3.0 cumulative GPA by the end of each Spring.
Students are notified via email of failure to meet annual requirements after the end of the Spring semester.
Appeals Process
On occasion, a student may fail to retain eligibility at the end of a semester and/or the annual evaluation period. We allow students one opportunity to appeal their ineligibility during the duration of their scholarship. As long as the student can provide supporting documentation of extenuating circumstances beyond the student’s control, they may submit an appeal for review. The Academic Appeal and Financial Aid Appeal Form is emailed directly to students who fail to meet renewal.
- If a student fails to meet the semester-based requirements (SAP and/or Academic Standing) at the end of Fall and/or Spring semesters, then they must submit the Academic Appeal and Financial Aid Appeal Form.
- If a student fails to meet the annual requirements (Minimum Enrollment and/or Minimum GPA) at the end of Spring semester, then they must submit the Blue & Gold Scholarship Appeal Form.
- This means that at the end of Spring semester, a student may require BOTH forms to be considered for reinstatement of the Blue & Gold Scholarship.