List Of Scholarships For High School Seniors In Atlanta, Georgia – HOPE has made college more accessible and affordable for more than two million students since Georgia voters approved the creation of the lottery-funded HOPE Scholarships and Grants more than 25 years ago.
Georgia needs to develop and utilize the full talents of its people in order to recover economically and remain competitive. For example, individuals without postsecondary qualifications are at greater risk of losing their jobs during recessions, and college and technical college enrollment tends to increase during economic downturns. However, most students in Georgia still lack the resources necessary to attend and graduate from college. Unequal barriers to opportunity begin in the early years and continue through elementary and middle school. Large racial and ethnic disparities in health, income, and wealth create challenges in college preparation, persistence, and graduation.
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HOPE Scholarships dominate the current state financial aid system. While HOPE has attracted many students to stay in state for college and encouraged college preparation in high school, these scholarships show patterns that reflect racial, ethnic, income and geographic disparities in state.
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Lawmakers could improve the state’s financial aid structure to provide more meaningful opportunities and economic flexibility to a broader group of students. Georgia needs to develop and exploit the full talents of its people to thrive and be competitive in the next century. Advancing PAG-ASA requires commitment and adaptation as the country, economy, and students change and grow.
Note: This report focuses on students who received HOPE awards at Georgia public colleges and universities. Students at private colleges and universities also receive HOPE awards.
Students of color have fought for full inclusion in higher education for decades. One indicator of its success is the rapid growth in college enrollment rates among students of color in Georgia. In the last 20 years, black student enrollment has grown twice as fast as the overall increase in the black population, and Latinx student enrollment has grown more than four times which is faster than the increase in the overall Latinx population.[6]
HOPE Scholarship and Zell Miller Scholarship recipients are also growing more diverse as more Asian, Black, Latino and multiracial students enroll in Georgia colleges. For example, between Fall 2010 and 2018, enrollment of Latinx students and HOPE Scholarship recipients nearly doubled.[7]
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Lawmakers changed the HOPE Scholarship, which covers full tuition and fees for all eligible students, to two scholarships in 2011, after severe cuts in government funding and large tuition increases. The Zell Miller Scholarship covers full tuition for students who meet higher GPA and standardized test score requirements. The HOPE Scholarship covers most tuition costs. No fee-paying scholarships. See the Appendix for more information.
The most recent snapshot of HOPE and Zell scholarship recipients is from Fall 2018. In that semester, 44 percent of undergraduate students received a HOPE or Zell Miller Scholarship. Asian and white students are most likely to receive these scholarships, while black and Native American students are the least likely.[8]
Black students are most underrepresented in the Zell Miller Scholarship (6 percent) compared to their representation among undergraduate students (29 percent). Latinx students are disproportionately represented among HOPE Scholars but underrepresented among Zell Miller Scholars.[9]
The Zell Miller Scholarship requires a high school GPA of 3.7 in core courses, a cumulative college GPA of 3.3, four credits rigorously as Advanced Placement or Dual Enrollment and a 1200 on the SAT or a 26 on ACT (HOPE rigor requirements are not required to be met by AP; see full list of courses at cafutures.org). Unequal opportunities in early childhood, elementary, and middle school create barriers for students trying to meet these standards. In school districts with higher levels of poverty and a higher proportion of black students, students are more likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers or those who teach subjects in which they are not licensed or certified. Students are less likely to access rigorous courses and earn credit for Dual Enrollment, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate courses.[10]
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The likelihood of receiving a HOPE or Zell Miller Scholarship increases with family income.[11] Family income is correlated with standardized test scores in K-12 education, so it’s no surprise that the Zell Miller scholarship whose eligibility is based in part on standardized tests reflects accumulated disadvantages associated with poverty. These barriers include poor health, limited access to high-quality early childhood education, poor access to experienced teachers, high levels of mobility and housing instability, and poor -access to summer and after-school enrichment activities.[12]
More than 90 percent of students with a family income of more than $120,000 in the university system received HOPE Scholarships or Zell Miller Scholarships from 2013-14 to 2018-19. The full-tuition Zell Miller Scholarship is primarily aimed at high-income families. More than 30 percent of students with a family income of more than $120,000 received a Zell Miller Scholarship for at least one semester over five years, compared to less than 10 percent of students who have a family income of less than $30,000.[13]
The lingering effects of slavery, Jim Crow and discriminatory housing, financial, employment and legal policies and practices lead to large racial and ethnic disparities in household income and wealth today. [14], [15, [16], [17]. The median income of white Georgia households is about $68,000, compared to $51,000 for Latinx households and $45,000 for black households.[18] Disparities in household wealth are even greater, likely to worsen over generations. Median wealth is over $127,000 for white households, $17,000 for Latinx households, and $8,000 for Black households.[19] Colleges and Universities Vary Widely in HOPE Funds Received
Colleges and universities with the highest income students serve the majority of students who receive state financial aid through the HOPE Scholarship. About half of all students in the university system come from families with incomes below $44,000, but income disparities for a typical student family vary widely by school. At three schools where the median family income of Georgia residents exceeds $100,000, more than seven in 10 undergraduates receive HOPE Scholarships. Less than half of students receive state aid through HOPE at all other colleges.[20]
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At the three colleges with students from the highest-income families, black students represent less than 10 percent of the student body, even though they represent 26 percent of students in the university system as a whole.[21] The underrepresentation of black students at these prestigious and well-resourced universities follows a long history of official and unofficial racial discrimination. The University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology admitted their first black students in 1961, after a federal district court judge ordered their integration following opposition from the state legislature. The university system continued to negotiate desegregation plans with the federal government throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Currently, the majority of HOPE Scholarship funds are awarded to students attending the University of Georgia. The University of Georgia (UGA) serves the largest number of HOPE recipients, second only to the technical college system. UGA also charges the second highest tuition fee. HOPE Scholarships cover approximately 79 percent of tuition at UGA, more than 90 percent of tuition at most other USG schools, and 76 percent of tuition at engineering colleges. HOPE recipients at the University of Georgia receive more than $176 million in state financial aid. The school with the next largest HOPE funding is Georgia State University, the largest school in the university system ($76 million in HOPE dollars). The entire Georgia Technical College System received approximately $62 million in HOPE dollars.[23]
Racial, ethnic and income disparities are also reflected in HOPE’s geographic analysis. Rural areas have the lowest postsecondary attainment rates.[24] Students from rural areas make up the largest share of students at state universities and community colleges, which receive the least amount of HOPE dollars.[25] In 16 countries, less than 30 percent of students qualify for the HOPE Scholarship. These counties tend to have high concentrations of poverty, are home to the largest number of black families and have historically relied heavily on generations of bonded labor.[26]
Students receiving HOPE awards at colleges of engineering further reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of engineering students in general. About half of engineering students and HOPE recipients are white, nearly four in 10 are black, and nearly one in 10 are Hispanic or Latino.[27]
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But the five different HOPE awards that engineering students are eligible to receive show differences. Of the three HOPE Grants for technical certificates and diplomas, HOPE Grant and HOPE Career Grant recipients more closely reflect the overall racial/ethnic makeup of engineering students. Full tuition Zell Miller Grants are biased against white recipients. (See the Appendix for details on the various HOPE awards available to engineering college students.)
About 5,400 HOPE or Zell Miller Scholarship recipients attend technical colleges. White students are overrepresented in the scholarships, which are available to engineering students pursuing associate degrees. Nearly 70 percent of HOPE or Zell Miller Scholarship recipients are white. Only 15 percent are black or African-American, even though black students make up 38 percent of the student body.[29]
Students enter their first college class with different life experiences, financial resources, access to social capital and safety nets. Differences arise from where students are born, the schools they attend, physical and mental health, and family financial security.
But Georgia’s financial aid