Hardin-Simmons University: merit scholarships by ACT score

Yes. Optional for four of the five automatic rows and REQUIRED for the best one. The GPA ladder from $14,000 to $20,000 needs no score, which is why each of those bands carries a testOptionalGpa equal to its own floor. The $22,000 Trustee Scholarship and the $25,000 Honors Scholarship both require an official score. One more constraint: HSU will not accept a partial ACT — all four sections must be tested, which matters because Science is optional on the Enhanced ACT.

“Top Academic scholarship- The Trustee Scholarship requires students to submit an official test score.”

Reproduced in full from Hardin-Simmons University’s own pages for Fall 2026 entry. Nothing here is estimated: where the school states a benefit rather than a figure, that is what the table says.

Yes. Yes, and about as generously as any school in this dataset. HSU superscores across sittings, across test TYPES (it will compare a best ACT against a best SAT and use whichever is better), and it counts ACT single-section retakes toward the composite it builds. The catch is in the same paragraph: all four ACT sections must have been tested for an ACT to be usable at all.

“If you've taken either ACT, SAT, or CLT more than once, we will look at all the subtests for a test type and create a superscore for you.”

So the number that matters here is your superscore, not your best single test. Work out your superscore and look that score up in the grid above — it may sit a band higher than the one you have been planning around.

Comparing schools? See which colleges superscore for scholarships — 66 of 501 commit to it, 52 say they do not, and the rest never say.

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.

Every figure on this page was read from Hardin-Simmons University’s own published pages, linked below with the date we last confirmed them. We do not estimate a missing band or interpolate a value.

• Scholarships — academic merit tables for new freshmen and transfersverified 2026-10-23
• Test Optional & Superscoringverified 2026-10-23
• Admission Requirements: First-Time Freshmen, and the Early Action datesverified 2026-10-23
• Grants, including the Texas Tuition Equalization Grantverified 2026-10-23

• The scholarship amount LOCKS AT ENTRY and can only ever go down. 'Each scholarship amount is locked in and cannot be raised once the semester starts', and 'A student may not receive an academic scholarship of higher value than the original award after they start attending as a degree-seeking student.' There is exactly one window to improve it: 'Academic scholarships can be increased before a student's very first semester starts, if updated GPA, SAT, or ACT scores are submitted to the Admissions department.' A student sitting a December or February ACT should send it before the first semester begins, not after.
• HSU'S GPA COLUMN IS BANDED TO ONE DECIMAL, AND THIS ENTRY READS IT THAT WAY. The printed bands are 3.0 – 3.1, 3.2 – 3.4, 3.5 – 3.8 and 3.9+. A 3.15, a 3.45 or a 3.85 falls between two printed cells, so each closed band here runs to just under the next one's floor — 3.19, 3.49 and 3.89 — which puts a 3.85 on the $18,000 Deans row rather than returning nothing. That is the conservative reading: it never promises the $20,000 Presidents row to a GPA below 3.9. If your GPA sits on one of those edges, ask HSU which row it reads you into, and use the note above to send an updated transcript before your first semester starts.
• THE TEXAS TUITION EQUALIZATION GRANT (TEG) IS STATE MONEY, NOT HSU MONEY. TEG exists specifically for Texas residents at Texas private colleges, which is exactly why families confuse it with an institutional award, and it is deliberately kept out of the grid above. It is need-based, funded by the State of Texas, and its eligibility is read off the FAFSA or TASFA plus a Texas Residency Form. Its renewal rules are stricter than the scholarship's: 'a student must complete 24 undergraduate credit hours (18 graduate hours) and have a 75% completion rate in the previous academic year with a cumulative 2.5 GPA for TEG renewal' — against the 2.0 the academic scholarship needs. TEG cannot be applied to summer, and undergraduate eligibility runs out five years from the first semester it was awarded at any institution. HSU also warns that graduate students only see TEG 'If TEG funds remain after awarding TEG to all eligible undergraduates', which is funds-exhausted language.
• The CHURCH MATCH is additive and Baptist-flavoured but not Baptist-restricted. 'HSU will match designated Christian church gifts $1-for-$1 up to $2,000 per year, per student', capped at $1,000 a semester, fall and spring only, and the church — not the student — has to submit the Church Match Scholarship Form every year. HSU also matches Abilene Education Foundation and Junior Achievement of Abilene awards, and matches $3,000–$6,000 for Stone Owl Scholars. All match scholarships together are capped at $4,000 a semester.
• Two more additive awards worth $1,500 each, both outside the grid and both mutually exclusive with the Honors and Leland programmes: the Valedictorian/Salutatorian scholarship, a one-year award requiring an official transcript showing a #1 or #2 class rank, and the Heritage Scholarship, for students whose parent or sibling graduated from HSU, who currently have a sibling at HSU, or whose parent serves in full-time Christian church ministry or as a full-time Christian missionary. The Heritage award runs four years / eight long terms and international students are not eligible.
• THE PAGE'S OWN YEAR LABELS DISAGREE. The table is headed 'New Freshmen in Fall 2026'; the sentence introducing it says 'For new incoming students in Fall 2025'; the fine print below says the scholarships 'apply to first-time freshmen or transfer students who begin attendance in the 2025-2026 academic year'; and the admission requirements page beside it is already running the Fall 2027 cycle with 2026-27 Early Action dates. The table heading is taken as authoritative here. Confirm the figures for your own entry year before planning around them.
• HSU WILL NOT ACCEPT A PARTIAL ACT: 'If you want to submit your ACT scores to HSU, we require all sections (English, Math, Reading, and Science) to be tested.' Science is optional on the Enhanced ACT, so a student who sits the test without it has no score HSU can use — and therefore no route to the $22,000 Trustee award. Separately, the admission requirements page also says 'HSU requires all sections of the ACT: English, Math, Reading, and Science' for the automatic-admission score route.
• Endowed and departmental money is a separate, competitive system and must not be added to the grid. It runs through AwardSpring, needs HSU login credentials (so only after admission), and HSU says plainly: 'Filling out a scholarship application within AwardSpring DOES NOT guarantee that you will receive an endowed scholarship.' Endowed awards are capped at tuition, and funds are unevenly distributed between departments. The Cynthia Ann Parker Endowed Presidential Scholars Program ($4,000 a year for Liberal Arts majors, four students a year) and the Ed & Betty Mann DPT Scholarship ($18,000, two students a year) are both invitation-sized rather than lookup-sized.
• The transfer ladder is a different set of numbers keyed to a COLLEGE GPA and uses no test score at all: Presidents $16,000 at 3.5+, Deans $14,000 at 3.0–3.4, University $12,000 at 2.5–2.9, Transfer $10,000 at 2.0–2.4. The award names repeat the freshman ones at lower amounts, so the two tables must not be conflated. Phi Theta Kappa adds $2,000 for transfers only, and first-time freshmen receiving an academic scholarship are explicitly ineligible for it.

• UDallasAlso in TX
• HCUAlso in TX
• ETBUAlso in TX
• OLLUAlso in TX
• RollinsAwards start at an ACT of 24
• AlabamaAwards start at an ACT of 25
• Point Loma NazareneAwards start at an ACT of 24
• WilmingtonAwards start at an ACT of 25

• Compare merit aid across schools — the same data, side by side.
• ACT scholarship calculator — run the numbers for a school not listed here.
• Test-optional doesn’t mean scholarship-optional — what skipping the ACT costs.
• How merit aid grids work — why the bands are steps.
• ACT superscore calculator — and whether it counts here.