The state of Georgia General Assembly has enacted a new bill entitled House Bill (HB) 697 (HOPE: revise amount of grants; equal student’s cost of tuition) which would create a version of the Zell Miller scholarship targeted to technical college students who maintain at least a 3.5 GPA.
This version of the Zell Miller Grant will provide full tuition for any students at technical colleges in the state of Georgia by including and defining a new paragraph as part of the original Zell Miller Scholarship eligibility for students that attend qualified technical colleges in the state of Georgia.
HB 697 reads that a student attending a technical college in the state of Georgia who maintains a minimum GPA of 3.5 will qualify as a “Zell Miller Grant Scholar.” With this designation, all of the student’s collegiate expenses are then paid in full.
This bill does not change the eligibility or reward amounts for four year university students. These students cannot qualify to be scholars under this bill. Zell Miller scholarship students at these universities must maintain a 3.7 GPA to receive full tuition through the Zell Miller scholarship.
For those students at technical colleges that are eligible, their tuition, books and room and board are all paid with the grant.
The Zell Miller Scholarship was created from the Hope Scholarship in 2011. They are now two separate scholarships.
The original Zell Miller Scholarship was only offered to high school students who maintained a 3.7 GPA and graduated with that GPA or higher. The award also requires that students receive a combined score of 1200 on the SAT or a 26 composite score on the ACT on one sitting of the test, according to the GAcollege411 website. The student can also qualify by being the Valedictorian or Salutatorian for their graduating high school class. These requirements along with being a Georgia resident and other HOPE scholarship eligibility requirements also determined if a student would receive the Zell Miller scholarship.
