Blog

Many businesses give back to the communities that support them by offering scholarship opportunities for local students.  Similarly, a number of prominent companies with a national scope offer generous corporate scholarships, such as this week's Scholarship of the Week.  The Lowe's Scholarship is a national scholarship program for high school seniors with annual prizes of up to $15,000 awarded based on academics, involvement, and leadership qualities.

Prize: A total of 375 scholarship awards:

• 352 $1,000 scholarships given to students across the country
• 22 $5,000 scholarships awarded to the most qualified applicant from each region
• 1 $15,000 scholarship to the most qualified applicant nationally

Eligibility: The Lowe’s Scholarship is open to all high school seniors who plan to attend any accredited 2-year or 4-year college or university within the United States. Winners are selected based on leadership qualities, community involvement and academic performance. 

This week's Scholarship of the Week is the Akash Kuruvilla Memorial Scholarship, an award created to keep alive Akash Kuruvilla's legacy of leadership, diversity, integrity and academia by rewarding students who share these same values.  One male and one female undergraduate student will receive a $1,000 scholarship award based on academics, extracurriculars, work and volunteer experience, financial need and a response to the question, "What does the phrase 'the American dream' mean to you, and how do you embody the American dream?"

Prize:

$1,000

Eligibility:

High school seniors and current undergraduate students who will be enrolled full-time in an accredited degree program in fall 2009.  Applicants must have a GPA of at least 3.5 on a 4.0 scale if high school seniors, or 3.0 on a 4.0 scale if current undergraduates. 

Roosevelt University in Chicago has just awarded its first batch of full-tuition scholarships to students graduating from Social Justice High School, a school on the city's southwest side.  Eight graduates from Social Justice High School earned four-year scholarships, each worth more than $80,000, for earning good grades and doing well on the ACT.

The program was announced in 2006 to give low-income students at a predominately Hispanic high school incentive to succeed in high school and go on to college.  To qualify, students must earn at least a 20 on the ACT and maintain a cumulative GPA of at least a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.  The scholarships cover up to the full cost of tuition at Roosevelt for four years, minus other aid.  In addition, the students will also receive housing allowances of $11,000 per year to allow them to live in the Roosevelt University dorms downtown.

Winning scholarships can hold many benefits for students beyond just financial ones.  The Roosevelt University scholarships at Social Justice High School encourage students not to give up on academics and to push themselves in school.  Several of the recipients retook the ACT or put in extra effort on their coursework in order to qualify for the scholarship.  Winning a scholarship can also motivate students to be more successful in college, according to research into benefits of scholarships.

The Chicago Sun-Times has more information on the Roosevelt University scholarship porgram. This is just one of many generous local scholarships out there.  To learn about other scholarship opportunities, you can conduct a free college scholarship search.

The University of Texas has announced plans to withdraw as a sponsor of National Merit, a popular national scholarship program that students qualify for based on standardized test scores. In an effort to focus on providing need-based financial aid, the university will no longer offer scholarships specifically for National Merit Scholars. The University of Texas, which was second only to Harvard University in the number of National Merit Finalists it enrolled, offered qualifying students awards worth up to $13,000 over the course of four years.

Texas is not the first major university system to choose to cease participating in National Merit, a program that offers $2,500 scholarships to high school juniors who do well on the PSAT, with the potential for honorees to receive much larger scholarship awards from partner companies and universities. Other institutions, including the University of California system, have previously chosen to withdraw sponsorship of National Merit, while many other schools have chosen not to offer awards specifically for National Merit winners.

National Merit has previously drawn criticism for its strong emphasis on high PSAT scores (other application materials are considered in selecting finalists, but semifinalists are chosen solely based on test scores). Students from wealthier families who have access to the best high schools and a variety of test preparation resources typically do best on standardized tests, such as the PSAT, which results in scholarship awards like National Merit skewing towards affluent students who need less assistance paying for college.

A University of Texas official cited similar reasoning in the university's decision to stop awarding National Merit Scholarships, stating that only one fourth of students receiving the scholarships typically bothered to apply for federal student financial aid, indicating the vast majority had access to other means of covering their college costs. The students who are most likely to be hurt by the loss of this scholarship opportunity will likely be helped by the increase in need-based financial aid that the university is promising.

University officials stressed that applicants who would have been eligible for this award will still be able to compete for other academic scholarships, and the undergraduate students currently receiving this award will continue to do so for their full four years of eligibility. Still, this announcement is likely to upset some students and to fuel the fires of the ongoing debate over merit-based versus need-based financial aid in colleges and universities.

Penn State University's Schreyer Honors College offers admitted students $3,500 per year merit scholarships, a common practice among state colleges that want to entice the best students to attend. Students at Penn State and their parents are doing something unique with these scholarship awards, though: they're giving them to other Schreyer students.

Parents of scholarship recipients who did not apply for need-based financial aid receive a letter asking them to consider making a donation in the amount of the scholarship their children received. The letter, penned by the parents of other Schreyer students, emphasizes the amount of unmet financial need some of their children's classmates face and asks them to consider whether they need the extra $3,500 in order to pay their tuition bill. If not, they are asked to give the money to students for whom the extra money could make the difference between attending college at Penn State and staying home.

The university stresses that students are not being asked to give up their academic scholarships in this campaign. Rather, they ask that parents who can spare the extra money because their child received a scholarship would consider donating to help other deserving students who last year had more than $1 million in unmet financial need.

Honors colleges, even at large state universities, tend to be relatively close-knit communities of top-performing students who are engaged in their studies and their campus communities. It's not surprising, then, that parents of Schreyer Honors College students hit upon an idea to help their children's struggling classmates last year when the economy first began to sink into recession. The campaign was initiated by parents and supported by the university, which sends the letters on the parents' behalf.

Last year's appeal raised around $228,000, with over $120,000 of that going directly to 34 students who needed help paying for school. The remaining $100,000 went towards establishing an endowed trust to ensure that this effort continues helping students in the future. So far this year, the campaign has raised $13,000 from 11 donors.

A new book is shedding light on graduation rates at state colleges, and also causing a stir with its findings and recommendations. The book, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities, was written by William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University, Michael S. McPherson, a former president of Macalester College, and Matthew M. Chingos, a graduate student at Harvard University. It shows many of the nation's top public schools are coming up short when it comes to graduating students in four years, especially low-income and minority students.

The book analyzes the four-year and six-year graduation rates of students at 21 flagship universities and 47 four-year public universities in Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.  Among the findings, the authors reveal that flagship universities, typically the most competitive and prestigious in their state university systems, graduate only 49 percent of their students in four years, with other state colleges having even less success.  The six-year graduation rates for both sets of schools are better, but vary widely based on several factors discussed in the book.

Disparities by common demographic factors, namely race and socioeconomic status, were found in the research for the book, and were most pronounced among male students. However, the most striking differences come in terms of schools' selectivity. Some of these disparities include:

• Graduation rates of 82-89% for the most selective and second most selective categories of schools and most competitive category of students (3.5+ high school GPA and 1200+ SAT score), but graduation rates of only 59% for the same category of students at the least selective schools.
• Graduation rates of above 70% for all students at the most selective schools, regardless of GPA or test scores.
• The disparity between the graduation rates of the most and least competitive students at the least selective schools was only 11 percentage points, while the disparity between students of similar ability at schools of different selectivity ranged 21 to 30 percentage points.
• The least competitive group of students (GPA of less than 3.0 and/or SAT of less than 1000) did better at the most selective schools (71% graduation rate) than the most competitive students did at the least selective schools (59% graduation rate).

These results have many questioning the effectiveness of academic scholarships and other merit-based aid, especially in light of the University of Texas at Austin's recent decision to stop sponsoring the National Merit Scholarship Program. More so, though, they have experts, including the book's authors, wondering what is causing this disparity in graduation rates.

Price plays a huge role for students of low socioeconomic status, pushing them to attend the least expensive (and often least selective) schools or to opt out of four-year colleges entirely. Rising costs also could play a role in dropout rates among poorer students, so the availability of financial aid for all four years is crucial to graduation.

One of the biggest problems identified in the book is a phenomenon dubbed "under-matching." Highly qualified students are aiming low in the college application process, attending less selective schools with lower graduation rates when they could easily be accepted to and graduate from more selective schools with higher graduation rates. Students most likely to under-match are low socioeconomic status students whose parents did not attend or did not graduate from college. The higher a student's income and parents' level of education, the less likely the student is to under-match.

Based on this information, the authors suggest that schools focus their efforts on encouraging students to graduate in four years and to remain in school until they graduate. Keeping tuition low is a part of this, as are readjusting requirements to make graduating in four years more doable and, above all else, making it clear that students are expected to graduate in four years.

Graduation rates are gaining attention from other corners, as well. Washington Monthly included graduation rates in their recently released college rankings, and another study published this summer by the American Enterprise Institute compared graduation rates at colleges.The Education Department is also doing its part to make information on graduation rates available to students who complete the FAFSA on the Web.

During the 2008-2009 academic year, an anonymous donor gave over $100 million to 20 colleges and universities nationwide. A large portion of the donated money was earmarked for university scholarships, specifically for minorities and women. Now, schools are beginning to spend the money, and The Chronicle of Higher Education is charting where the money is going.

So far, over 3,700 students at 15 schools have benefited from the money in some way, ranging from $100 book grants to scholarship awards of $5,000 per year or more. Students are also receiving indirect benefits of the donated money, as schools are using some of the discretionary funds to close gaps in their budgets left by reduced state spending and endowment losses, as well as to build up student resources and better support faculty research.

Primarily, though, the money is going towards scholarships. In addition to the funds already awarded, several of the schools plan to unveil scholarship programs in 2010, or to expand scholarship opportunities already offered through funding from the anonymous donor. Need-based and merit-based academic scholarships are being expanded or created and will reach out to students ranging from urban students attending Purdue University to military spouses at the University of Maryland University College.

A number of the colleges are looking for ways to jumpstart permanent endowed scholarship funds with the anonymous donations. Michigan State University and the University of Hawaii at Hilo are both starting matching-grant funds to encourage more donations for endowed scholarships on their campuses. California State University at Northridge is hoping to ultimately support 50 students a year through a freshman honors scholarship program begun with the donated money.

These generous donations from an anonymous source are changing students' lives nationwide and making paying for school easier. Universities are hoping that news of the donations and the continued good they're doing will spur others to give generously to scholarship programs. In the meantime, though, many individuals and organizations are already offering sizeable amounts of scholarship money to a wide range of deserving students. Conduct a free scholarship search to see some of these opportunities that may benefit you.

The latest group of Rhodes Scholars was announced by The Rhodes Trust yesterday, with 32 Americans chosen to receive two to four years of study at the University of Oxford in England, all expenses paid.  The Rhodes scholarships were created in 1902 through the will of Cecil Rhodes, who hoped to broaden leaders' minds by exposing them to different cultures, and the first group of Americans entered Oxford in 1904. It is now the oldest international fellowship offered, and the number of applicants who apply make it one of the most competitive academic and merit-based scholarships out there. This year, more than 1,500 students sought their college or university's endorsement into the program, and 805 received those endorsements, just the first step in the application process. The winners will enter Oxford next October.  So how do you apply for the prestigious award?

• Candidates for the award must be endorsed by their college, and any rules or deadlines regarding that endorsement will be set by your Rhodes Scholarship institutional representative.
• In addition to that endorsement, applications will require five to eight letters of recommendation, a personal essay, a certified transcript, a list of activities, photograph, and proof of citizenship. Deadlines fall in October annually, but as the process is involved, it's best to get an early start.
• Committees in 16 U.S. districts across the country invite the strongest applicants to appear for interviews, where questions will explore the information you've given on your application.
• Applicants are chosen based on the following criteria, set forward by Cecil Rhodes: high academic achievement, integrity of character, a spirit of unselfishness, respect for others, potential for leadership, and physical vigor. (You don't need to be a star athlete to fulfill that last criteria, just show a "fondness for sports.")

A group of international students is also chosen annually, with 80 scholars joining the Americans this year. If you're interested in an international experience but aren't interested studying at Oxford, there are hundreds of study abroad opportunities available in nearly every discipline, and nearly every country. Broaden your horizons, and know there are also study abroad scholarships out there to help you fund your time abroad.

A few months back, we wrote about helpful tips on maximizing merit aid, or aid based on a student’s attributes like academics, athletics and extracurriculars. For college applicants who aren’t deemed financially needy in terms of their FAFSA or EFC, merit aid can make a huge difference in the schools they can realistically afford to attend. Students and families seeking this extra financial aid boost should consider researching schools more likely to dispense merit-based awards but with so many colleges and universities in the U.S., which ones are the best financial bets?

Help has arrived in the form of U.S. News, which has compiled a top 10 list of schools that awarded the highest percentage of merit-based funding to non-needy students during the 2009-10 academic year (the stats do not include financially needy students who were given merit aid or students who received athletic scholarships or other tuition breaks). Take a look:

• Louisiana College - 88%
• Cooper Union - 68%
• Free Will Baptist Bible College - 61%
• University of Central Oklahoma - 54%
• Hawaii Pacific University - 52%
• Cumberland University - 50%
• New College of Florida - 49%
• Denison University - 47%
• Mayville State University - 46%
• DePauw University - 45%

High school students, does this data have you looking at these schools in a new light? Current college students attending one of the schools listed above, did merit aid make the difference as to whether or not you enrolled?

Wherever you are in the financial aid process, you’ve probably heard the term merit aid – financial aid based on students' academic and other merit rather than financial need – and its increasing popularity over the last decade or so. What you may not know, however, is the impact this trend has had on students seeking need-based aid.

According to a new report by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics, state and institutional financial aid for low-income students has dropped significantly as merit aid has increased. From 1995-96 to 2007-8, the proportion of merit aid recipients in the highest quartile of family income rose from 23 percent to 28 percent, while the proportion of merit aid beneficiaries from the lowest economic quartile fell to 20 percent from 23 percent. (See more statistics here.) The report also suggests that many institutions have embraced merit aid because they believe this type of award will entice middle- or high-income applicants to attend their school over others (and pay more money to the school as a whole during the time they are enrolled) instead of offering financial assistance to low-income students who truly need the funds to attend college.

What’s your stance on merit aid? Does it help more than it harms in higher education or vice versa?