Park University: merit scholarships by GPA
Park University awards automatic merit aid from a published grid keyed to GPA — the ACT is not used. Awards start at a 2.0 GPA and reach $6,000 a year. Because the bands are steps rather than a slope, a hundredth of a GPA point is worth nothing inside a band and the whole step at the edge of one.
Enter a GPA below to see which band it actually lands in, what that band pays, and what the next band needs.
Read this first
Park's merit money is GPA-only. The three automatic freshman awards name a cumulative GPA window and no test score, and even Park's top competitive awards list the ACT as 'recommended – not required' next to a hard GPA floor. So a higher score buys nothing at Park — the lever is the GPA. These figures apply to the Parkville and Gilbert campuses and to full-time students; Park also reserves the right to change or suspend any scholarship at its discretion.
Unweighted, as the school asks for it.
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Example — a 3.60 GPA
Founders Scholarship
$6,000 / year
About $24,000 over four years, if it renews.
Park awards this on GPA alone, so an ACT score does not change it. A higher score can still matter for admission, for honours programmes, and at other schools on the list — but not for this award.
The ACT doesn't move the money here — but it still decides admission, honours eligibility, and what they is worth at the other schools on the list, where most awards are score-keyed.
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The published Park merit aid grid
Reproduced in full from Park University’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.
First-time freshman academic scholarships
Considered automatically on the admission application, with no separate scholarship application, and guaranteed for 8 semesters. The $1,000 A+ Recognition Scholarship and the one-time $500 Visit Award stack on top of whichever band applies — they are additions, not alternatives, so they are not rows here.
$6,000
Founders Scholarship
No score needed
$5,000
Park University Marvin Brooks Scholarship
No score needed
$3,000
Hundley-Volker Scholarship
No score needed
| Award | With a score | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Founders Scholarship | — | $6,000 |
| Park University Marvin Brooks Scholarship | — | $5,000 |
| Hundley-Volker Scholarship | — | $3,000 |
Source: Parkville Scholarships — First-Time Freshman Academic Scholarships · verified 2026-10-23
Does Park superscore for scholarships?
Not stated, and at Park it is close to moot: no award is keyed to a composite, so there is nothing for a superscore to lift. The word appears nowhere on Park's scholarship or admission pages.
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 Park’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.
Park scholarship deadlines
| Entry term | Due |
|---|---|
| Admission application opens, FAFSA available | August 1 |
| Admission notification begins | October 1 |
| Competitive Scholarship Deadline (freshman timeline) | November 1 |
| Competitive scholarship application and all materials received (Honors Academy page) | End of the first Friday in November |
| Scholarship release | December 1 |
| FAFSA priority date and second scholarship deadline | February 1 |
| Competitive scholarship recipients announced | No later than February 1 |
| National College Decision Day | 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 Park 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.
- Parkville Scholarships — First-Time Freshman Academic Scholarshipsverified 2026-10-23
- Park Scholarships — how merit awards are considered, and the scholarship timelineverified 2026-10-23
- Parkville Freshmen Competitive Scholarships (Honors Academy)verified 2026-10-23
- Park University Admission Requirementsverified 2026-10-23
- Missouri's Access Missouri Grant and Bright Flight are STATE money and are not in the grid. Bright Flight is the trap: it is ACT-keyed — it pays on a top-3%-in-Missouri composite — so at a school whose own merit grid ignores the ACT entirely, a family can easily read it as Park's ACT scholarship. It is not. It comes from the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, needs Missouri residency and a FAFSA, and arrives on top of anything Park awards. Park keeps it on a separate 'Missouri resident financial aid' page for exactly that reason.
- Two pages give the competitive deadline differently. Park's freshman timeline marks the Competitive Scholarship Deadline at November 1; the Honors Academy page says 'All scholarship applications and materials must be received by the end of the first Friday in November.' Work to the earlier of the two.
- The $5,000 Marvin Brooks band is the one to read carefully. Its eligibility line is a plain '3.0–3.49 cumulative GPA', but the description adds 'Priority Criteria: First-generation college students and membership in a racial or ethnic minority group that is underrepresented... Local area applicants are given primary consideration in the selection process.' Park also says 'The number of awards varies per scholarship.' It is filed with the 2.0-renewal automatic awards, so it is modelled as automatic — but it is the band least safe to plan around.
- The three competitive awards are interview-gated and therefore excluded from the grid: the Presidential Honors Scholarship (full tuition plus room and board, up to 2 awards), the McAfee (full tuition, up to 15), and the Trustee ($8,500 a year for four years). All three require two teacher references, a 300–500 word essay, a resume, and attendance at Honors Scholarship Interview Day in December.
- The Presidential and McAfee awards REPLACE institutional aid rather than adding to it — 'May not hold any additional institutional scholarships or grants (academic or athletic)' — though external scholarships are allowed. The Trustee does not carry that restriction.
- Even eligibility to interview has a floor the award pages do not state: 'Receipt of the student's Park University application, 6th semester high school transcripts with no less than a 3.7 cumulative weighted GPA.'
- The A+ Recognition Scholarship is $1,000 a year and explicitly '(stackable)', for Missouri high school graduates with A+ designation and a 2.5 GPA. It adds to the band above; it is not an alternative to it.
- The Visit Award is a one-time $500 for completing a campus visit, including an athletics visit — the cheapest money on the page and easy to miss.
- Park awards are applied to direct charges only (tuition, fees, housing, meal plans) and 'may be adjusted' against tuition remission, tuition exchange or a military discount rate, so a student already on a reduced rate may not see the full figure.
- Returning-student and endowed scholarships (over 100 of them) are a separate, application-based system that opens November 1 and runs to March 15, with no published amounts.
- Park is silent on the Enhanced ACT.
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 Park University.
Frequently asked questions
What ACT score do you need for a scholarship at Park?
Park University publishes a merit aid grid keyed to ACT score and GPA. See the tables on this page for the current bands.
Is Park test-optional?
A score is not part of the normal freshman requirement. Park only reaches for one in the weakest cases, where it may ask for top-half class rank plus a 20 ACT as evidence for a student whose prior academic record is below a 2.0. For merit aid the answer is different: not used. No automatic award names a score, and the competitive awards state the point directly — the Presidential Honors Scholarship lists 'ACT 32/SAT 1450 recommended – not required', the McAfee a 28 on the same terms, the Trustee a 25. In every case the hard gate beside it is a GPA (3.8+, 3.75+, 3.7+), and the decision is made by essay, references and a multistage committee interview. 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 Park?
On Park's published grid for the current cycle, an ACT of 30 with a 3.6 GPA qualifies for Founders Scholarship at $6,000 a year, about $24,000 over four years if it renews.
Does Park superscore the ACT for scholarships?
Not stated, and at Park it is close to moot: no award is keyed to a composite, so there is nothing for a superscore to lift. The word appears nowhere on Park's scholarship or admission pages.
When are Park scholarship deadlines?
Admission application opens, FAFSA available: August 1. Admission notification begins: October 1. Competitive Scholarship Deadline (freshman timeline): November 1. Competitive scholarship application and all materials received (Honors Academy page): End of the first Friday in November. Scholarship release: December 1. FAFSA priority date and second scholarship deadline: February 1. Competitive scholarship recipients announced: No later than February 1. National College Decision Day: 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 Park scholarship data current?
Every figure on this page was read from Park University'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.
Other schools to check
What to do next
Park awards on GPA — but the ACT still decides what you're worth elsewhere.
Most schools in this comparison are score-keyed even though Park is not, so the same test still moves the money everywhere else on the list.
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