Bryan College: merit scholarships by ACT score
Bryan College awards automatic merit aid from a published grid keyed to the ACT alone, with no GPA criterion. Awards start at an ACT of 21 and reach $5,600 a year. Because the bands are steps rather than a slope, one point is worth nothing inside a band and the whole step at the edge of one.
Enter a score and a GPA below to see which band it actually lands in, what that band pays, and exactly how many points the next one needs.
Read this first
Bryan pays on whichever one of three numbers you have, not all three: the table sits under the heading "One of the following criteria must be met", so the ACT, the unweighted high school GPA and a college GPA over nine or more dual-enrollment hours are alternative routes to the same tier. Only the ACT route is shown in the bands below, and the GPA that reaches the same amount with no score at all is recorded beside it. Two more things to read carefully: the amounts carry no stated period — the column is headed only "Amount" — and the grid lives on the Academic Scholarships detail page, not on the scholarship index, where the same award reads "AMOUNT: Varies".
Unweighted, as the school asks for it.
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Example — an ACT 29 with a 3.60 GPA
Platinum Academic Scholarship
$5,600 / year
About $22,400 over four years, if it renews.
There is no higher band to reach at this GPA — more points would not change the award here. They may still matter for admission, for honours programmes, or at other schools on the list.
Knowing where a score sits is the easy part. Moving it starts with knowing exactly which questions they're being missed, and why.
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Can you get merit aid at Bryan without an ACT score?
Yes. Optional, and genuinely so. Every rung of the academic ladder has a published GPA equivalent, so a student with no score still reaches $2,500 to $5,600 on an unweighted high school GPA alone — which is why each band carries a testOptionalGpa. A score only matters where it beats the GPA route. The one place a score becomes close to necessary is the Veritas honors invitation, where the test-free alternative is a 4.0.
Read the two columns in the grid below as a trade. The same award is reachable either way — with a score at a lower GPA, or with no score at a higher one. A score is worth real money to a student whose GPA sits under the test-optional line, and worth little to one comfortably above it.
“Academic scholarships are available to first-time college students and determined by a student’s high school GPA, a student’s test scores (ACT/SAT/CLT) or cumulative GPA from 9 or more college-level (DE – Dual Enrollment) credits earned prior to the date that enrollment begins.”
The published Bryan merit aid grid
Reproduced in full from Bryan College’s own pages for the current cycle. Nothing here is estimated: where the school states a benefit rather than a figure, that is what the table says.
Academic Scholarships (ACT route)
Decided in the admission review — "Completing the admissions process and receiving your acceptance letter ensures that we can begin evaluating your eligibility for scholarships" — with no separate scholarship application. Each tier is reachable three ways and the ACT is only one of them, so the score is an alternative route rather than a gate. Additive money exists but is not a second track: the $1,000 Alumni Grant, the $1,000 Sibling Grant and the $2,000 Rhea County Scholarship are separate awards with their own criteria, while the $7,250 Christian Leader/Foreign Missionary award and the National Merit award are both non-stackable and would replace this one.
$5,600
Platinum Academic Scholarship
ACT 27–36 · ACT 27 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.80 high school GPA, or a 3.50 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score.
Without a score: GPA 3.80
$4,100
Silver Academic Scholarship
ACT 24–36 · ACT 24 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.60 high school GPA, or a 3.25 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score.
Without a score: GPA 3.60
$2,500
Crimson Academic Scholarship
ACT 21–36 · ACT 21 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.40 high school GPA, or a 3.00 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score.
Without a score: GPA 3.40
| Award | With a score | No score | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platinum Academic Scholarship | ACT 27–36 · ACT 27 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.80 high school GPA, or a 3.50 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score. | GPA 3.80 | $5,600 |
| Silver Academic Scholarship | ACT 24–36 · ACT 24 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.60 high school GPA, or a 3.25 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score. | GPA 3.60 | $4,100 |
| Crimson Academic Scholarship | ACT 21–36 · ACT 21 or higher — no GPA required on this route. An unweighted 3.40 high school GPA, or a 3.00 college GPA over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score. | GPA 3.40 | $2,500 |
Source: Academic Scholarships — the Platinum, Silver and Crimson grid for first-time freshmen · verified 2026-10-23
Does Bryan superscore for scholarships?
Not stated. The word "superscore" appears nowhere on Bryan's Academic Scholarships grid, its scholarship index, its admissions-process page or its financial-aid pages, and the grid rows give a bare "ACT" threshold without saying whether that composite may be assembled across sittings. Ask admissions before deciding which sittings to send.
With nothing published, plan for the stricter reading: look up your best single sitting in the grid above, work out your superscore as well, and ask Bryan’s financial aid office which one they read before you count on the higher band.
Comparing schools? See which colleges superscore for scholarships — 66 of 501 commit to it, 52 say they do not, and the rest never say.
Bryan scholarship deadlines
| Entry term | Due |
|---|---|
| Admission — rolling, with applications encouraged from the spring of junior year | Rolling |
| FAFSA, to be considered for the Bryan Opportunity Scholarship Program | March 31 |
| FAFSA, to claim and renew the National Merit award | April 15 |
| Enrollment fee refundable through this date, then non-refundable (December 1 for spring entry) | May 1 |
Scores take roughly two to four weeks to arrive, and official reports sent to schools can take longer, so the last useful test date is several weeks before the printed deadline. Check which test dates still make it.
Where these numbers came from
Every figure on this page was read from Bryan College’s own published pages, linked below with the date we last confirmed them. We do not estimate a missing band or interpolate a value.
- Academic Scholarships — the Platinum, Silver and Crimson grid for first-time freshmenverified 2026-10-23
- Scholarships & Grants — the full index of Bryan awards and amountsverified 2026-10-23
- The Admissions Process — requirements, required documents and rolling decisionsverified 2026-10-23
- Tuition & Fees — main campus 2026-2027verified 2026-10-23
- Veritas: The Honors Program Scholarship — the invitation-only competitive awardverified 2026-10-23
- Bryan Opportunity Scholarship Program — the Tennessee tuition-covered awardverified 2026-10-23
- National Merit Scholarship — tuition covered, non-stackableverified 2026-10-23
- The Tennessee HOPE Scholarship and Tennessee Promise are STATE money, not Bryan's. Tennessee HOPE is keyed to an ACT of 21 or a 3.0 weighted high school GPA and is administered by the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation at any eligible Tennessee institution, which is exactly why families mistake it for institutional aid: a 21 appears on Bryan's Crimson row and on the state's HOPE rule for unrelated reasons. Tennessee Promise is the state's last-dollar community-college program. Neither is in the grid above, and neither is money Bryan decides. Bryan's own Opportunity Scholarship does require you to be "TN HOPE Scholarship Eligible", so the state award is a gate on one Bryan award without being one.
- Two awards would replace this one rather than add to it. The Christian Leader/Foreign Missionary award is $7,250 and is labelled "Non-Stackable" in the award's own title. The National Merit award for a Finalist or Semi-Finalist "is non-stackable with any other Bryan aid" and instead covers tuition "through all applicable scholarships and grants from federal, state, and institutional sources" — which is a last-dollar guarantee, not a flat figure, so no amount is recorded for it.
- The Presidential ($3,000-$4,000) and Dean's ($1,000-$2,000) Scholarships are published as ranges, not amounts, and both are decided "after attending the on-campus Fall scholarship event" — so they are deliberately not in the grid. They are also mutually exclusive with each other: "Students selected for the Presidential Scholarship are not eligible to receive the Dean's Scholarship." Both renew on a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
- The Veritas honors scholarship is the one award where a score is close to necessary, and it is competitive rather than automatic: invitation needs a 25+ ACT or 1200+ SAT and a 3.5 high school GPA, "a high school GPA of 4.0 is required to be invited" with no scores at all, admission to the program "is by invitation only", and even then only "a select number of students in the program will be offered a scholarship." It is $550 and renews on a 3.5 cumulative GPA plus a B- or better in every Veritas course.
- Additive money that does not belong in a grid: $1,000 Alumni Grant (a parent who is a Bryan alumnus; not doubled if both parents are), $1,000 Sibling Grant (a sibling enrolled full-time and residential; not doubled for multiple siblings), $2,000 Rhea County Scholarship for students who lived in Rhea County through senior year, and $1,000 Phi Theta Kappa. Several of these require full-time RESIDENTIAL enrolment, so a commuter loses them.
- The Rhea County Scholarship repeats the academic grid's OR structure almost word for word — "a minimum of a 3.4 High School GPA OR a 21 ACT or equivalent test scores OR 9 or more college-level (DE – Dual Enrollment) credits with a cumulative GPA of at least 3.00" — which is useful confirmation that the three columns of the main table really are alternatives.
- The Bryan Opportunity Scholarship Program is a tuition-covered award for Tennessee residents, but it is need-gated rather than score-gated: a first-time student, FAFSA by March 31, "Total family income of $60,000 or less", and HOPE eligibility. Like the National Merit award it is phrased as tuition covered "through all applicable scholarships and grants", so it is a last-dollar outcome, not a figure.
- Bryan accepts the Classic Learning Test alongside the ACT and SAT for both admission and the academic grid, and it is one of the few schools in this dataset that does. The grid publishes only the ACT column, so a CLT student cannot read their award off the table.
- Bryan's scholarship pages carry no entry-year label at all, while the Tuition & Fees table beside them is headed "Main Campus | 2026-2027" at $21,700 tuition for the year. The figures are recorded as the current cycle rather than pinned to a year the scholarship page does not state.
- The scholarship index and the grid disagree about the same award by design: the index row for Academic Scholarships reads "AMOUNT: Varies" where the detail page gives $5,600, $4,100 and $2,500. A student who only reads the index will believe Bryan publishes nothing.
Check before you rely on it. Grids change by entry year and schools update them without notice. This page is a reproduction with a date on it, not a guarantee, and it is not financial aid advice. ClutchACT is not affiliated with Bryan College.
Frequently asked questions
What ACT score do you need for a scholarship at Bryan?
Automatic merit aid at Bryan College starts at an ACT composite of 21, alongside the published GPA minimum, and reaches $5,600 a year at the top. The bands are steps rather than a slope, so the only score that matters is the next threshold above where you are now.
Is Bryan test-optional?
Conditional. A score is one of two alternative routes in: clear admission needs "High school GPA of 2.8 OR ACT composite of 18 or SAT of 960 (on 1600 scale) or CLT of 55", so a student above a 2.8 never has to test to be admitted, and a student below it does. Bryan also accepts a third test, the Classic Learning Test, and warns that "CLT scores may not be recognized for state grants or athletic certification". For merit aid the answer is different: optional, and genuinely so. Every rung of the academic ladder has a published GPA equivalent, so a student with no score still reaches $2,500 to $5,600 on an unweighted high school GPA alone — which is why each band carries a testOptionalGpa. A score only matters where it beats the GPA route. The one place a score becomes close to necessary is the Veritas honors invitation, where the test-free alternative is a 4.0. Being admitted without a score and qualifying for money without a score are two separate questions.
How much is a 30 on the ACT worth at Bryan?
On Bryan's published grid for the current cycle, an ACT of 30 with a 3.6 GPA qualifies for Platinum Academic Scholarship at $5,600 a year, about $22,400 over four years if it renews.
How much is one more ACT point worth at Bryan?
The most valuable single point on Bryan's published grid is 23 to 24, at a GPA of act 24 or higher — no gpa required on this route. an unweighted 3.60 high school gpa, or a 3.25 college gpa over 9 or more dual-enrollment hours, reaches the same amount with no score.: it moves the award by $1,600 a year, or $6,400 across a four-year degree. The same point is worth less at other GPAs, and most points move nothing at all — the grid steps rather than slopes, which is why the only score worth aiming at is the next threshold.
Does Bryan superscore the ACT for scholarships?
Not stated. The word "superscore" appears nowhere on Bryan's Academic Scholarships grid, its scholarship index, its admissions-process page or its financial-aid pages, and the grid rows give a bare "ACT" threshold without saying whether that composite may be assembled across sittings. Ask admissions before deciding which sittings to send.
When are Bryan scholarship deadlines?
Admission — rolling, with applications encouraged from the spring of junior year: Rolling. FAFSA, to be considered for the Bryan Opportunity Scholarship Program: March 31. FAFSA, to claim and renew the National Merit award: April 15. Enrollment fee refundable through this date, then non-refundable (December 1 for spring entry): May 1. The application and the official score report are both due by that date, and ACT scores take roughly two to four weeks to arrive — so the last useful test date is several weeks earlier than the deadline suggests.
Is this Bryan scholarship data current?
Every figure on this page was read from Bryan College's own published pages and last verified on 2026-10-23. The sources are linked at the bottom of the page with that date. Grids change by entry year, so check the source before relying on a figure for a decision.
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What to do next
You know what a score is worth at Bryan. The question is whether you can move it.
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