What is considered a good GPA at university?

Would this get me a full ride to a university?

• i want to try for a full ride at alabama university and the eastern michigan university. i'm going for the presidential scholarship (a full ride) that is very competitive and only given out to 20-25 students per year. here are my stats: 32 ACT 4.0 gpa top 11% of my class graduating with honors 1 year in musical (9) 1 year yb staff (10) 1 year art club (10) 2 years spanish club historian (9, 10 - program got shut down after that because of funding) Half a month as a foreign exchange student in Ecuador completing service projects (2010) 2 years newspaper staff (11, 12) 2 years NHS member (11, 12) 200 hours volunteering at my local hospital, in the dietetics department, which is what i want to major in 5 years working experience by the time i graduate (3 in an ice cream store, 2 in a restaurant, both important areas for dietetics) background in my field - i used to be obese, that's why i want to be a dietitian the reason i'm not as involved in school is because i've had to work my entire life, even though my family is not financially in a 'hard time'. i work all the time, which makes it hard to do anything in school, plus i'm terrible and not athletic at all, which makes it worse. do you think this is good enough to get me considered, or do you honestly think it's not enough?

• Answer:

  Honestly, if all it took was to have your credentials, lots of us could have gotten free rides. You have a cornucopia of activities, like most students do, and beyond that you have a solid record, but I really do understand why you in particular should get it over anybody else. Full ride scholarships are things you hear our parents talking about, but I do not know that this idea is even widespread anymore especially given the huge push about getting *everyone* to go to college, where would the funds come? As the previous poster said, most schools do not give out full rides. It would be best to look locally for scholarships. For instance, a program like "The Kalamazoo Promise" funds fully or partially any college in the state of Michigan (where Kalamazoo is) for students who grew up going to public schools in the city. Another option is to look at a specific schools and see what they offer. For example, Western Michigan University gives out the Golden Medallion Scholarship, which is awarded based on preliminary filtering based on academics and then given to the highest scoring competitors over the course of a day-long academic competition at WMU. The award is not limited only to Michigan residents either.