HOPE Scholarship
The Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) Program is a scholarship and grant initiative established in Georgia in 1993.
Georgia's first year of sales brought in a national record of $1.13 billion, providing $360 million for the three education programs.
November 3, 1996: Entering freshmen high school students (Class of 2000) must now earn a B average in the core curriculum courses of English, math, social studies, foreign language and science to receive the HOPE Scholarship upon graduation.
June 29, 1998: The Council on School Performance releases a study that concludes: "We found that recipients of Georgia's HOPE Scholarship are more likely to remain enrolled in college, have higher college grade point averages and have earned more credit hours than students without the scholarship."
November 3, 1998: Georgia voters elect to create a Constitutional amendment protecting the HOPE Scholarship Program from legislative and political tampering.
Also, thanks to HOPE, for the fifth year in a row Georgia leads the nation in providing academic-based financial aid.
March 2003: The Georgia General Assembly created the Improvement of the HOPE Scholarship Joint Study Commission.
The purpose of the commission was to identify and recommend actions to ensure adequate funding of the HOPE program for years to come.
May 2004: House Bill 1325 was signed into law, creating the most significant changes in the HOPE program since its beginning.
May 2007: The new HOPE Scholarship high school grade point average calculation and transcript exchange project was implemented, in accordance with House Bill 1325 passed in 2004.
House Bill 152 was implemented, which allows home study student, ineligible high school graduates, and GED recipients to gain HOPE Scholarship eligibility by scoring in the 85th percentile on the SAT/ACT.
[6] March 2011: Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, together with state legislative leaders, pushed a new law into effect, raising the GPA requirements for HOPE and eliminating payments for books and mandatory fees.
[10] [6] The money provided to HOPE Scholars varies and depends on the type of institution as well as the student's specific enrollment.
