Make it a true merit scholarship

High school juniors take the SAT (formerly called the Scholastic Assessment Test) in Clemson, South Carolina. The test is designed to assess math and verbal abilities and is required of applicants to most colleges in the United States. Mary Ann Chastain/AP/Wide World Photos
The Official SAT Question of the Day™
A florist buys roses at $0.50 apiece and sells them for $1.00 apiece. If there are no other expenses, how many roses must be sold in order to make a profit of $300?
a)100 b)150 c)200 d)300 e)600

I know my griping about the Community Foundation Scholarship sounds like sour grapes. I admit that I have bitten into some of those unripe fruit of the vine from time to time. So this is my sour grapes disclaimer. OK, that being said, it is a good thing to have these fabulous scholarships available.

There are interesting social implications and unforeseen consequences that make a critical examination of the scholarships worthwhile. My last blog, Problems with Merit talked about potential pressures within the High School academic community to cheat, perhaps in ways destructive to other students, to win this huge prize. I don’t believe that this is an exaggeration. It is human nature to consciously or subconsciously favor your children, relatives and members of your social class. In any case I am certain that my readers can relate stories of their own about favoritism in the classroom. In keeping with my earlier theme of class and caste, I think it is obvious that this prize favors the middle class and could even encourage further middle class favoritism in the school.

Mind you, I don’t know the name of even one person on this scholarship selection committee. But there isn’t really a broad choice available. Ideally you would want wealthy philanthropists, university administrators, an African American activist, and some up and coming entrepreneurs. In other words, if this money is aimed at the middle class, you don’t want middle class people making the decision. They are too close to the spoils. In this case the Lilly Foundation represents the very wealthy philanthropist tossing a nice bone to the middle class. I suppose the Lilly foundation envisions the local upper crust properly representing the Lilly's intent, in other words, rich people granting a nice prize to some smart middle class kids. Here in Starke County the upper crust is very thin. The factory owners live elsewhere. There is no university, African American activists, or wealthy philanthropists. There is the odd rich farmer, and wealthy merchant. But mostly the pool for the selection committee is the usual upper middle class professions: lawyers, doctors, and teachers. They are very close to the potential recipients in many ways. I think too close. Certainly this isn’t a case of the rich handing out a prize to the middle class.

Of course I have a suggestion. Make the Community Foundation Lilly Scholarship a pure merit prize based entirely on objective criteria. A simple solution would be SAT scores. Everybody is equal: boys, girls, Knox students, and home-schoolers, even dropouts. Do you know that some really bright students are happily accepted to university without a high school diploma? No student would have reason to believe that they would be at any disadvantage due to coming from a “bad” family or having a powerful enemy. The only down side would be if more than 2 or 3 students had perfect SAT scores. But wouldn’t that be a great problem to have!

Problems with Merit

Eaton College, Berkshire. Drawn by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Engraved by W. Radclyffe. 1831

Allow me to go back. The year was 1933. My father and his younger brother were in a preparatory school in England. His family was middle class but striving to rise. (Class was quite a real issue in those days in England). Private preparatory school was a difficult luxury for his family. It was well understood that the Cross boys needed to excel so as to qualify for one of the great English public schools (it is confusing but in England the term “public school” refers to a private school not funded by the state). The great hope was that by rising to the top my father could qualify for a merit scholarship to a top public school like Eaton College.

Unfortunately my father witnessed his brother receiving an undeserved and brutal beating from the hand of one of the teachers. My father intervened and was later somewhat vindicated by subsequent investigation. Although he was not expelled, his chances to be the top student were ended because the teacher in question had the power to block him and, in fact, did so.

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I observed an incident at Knox High School about 10 years ago. A very bright and promising young man had just moved to town. He was confident and talented, gifted intellectually, musically and physically. His family background was strictly working class. No one in his family had gone to college. He got into a fight with a fellow student that happened to have a close relative in the high school administration. (This fight involved the attentions of a young lady.) This promising working class young man was expelled from school for a period of time, there was a mandatory reduction in his grades, and he lost his top position in the class. His rival suffered no similar setback and ended up as top student. The working class young man went into the military after high school. His rival with the well-placed relative went to college

If the Lilly Scholarships were available at that time, there is no doubt in my mind that the well-placed young man would have been a finalist and most likely a winner. He was top of his class, was from an “excellent” old-Knox family, and had ok SATs. His working class rival was 10 or 15 spots behind in class rank, had an expulsion record, and was from out of town. Even with better SATs, he would not have had a chance. In my opinion there was no doubt which of these students had the greatest merit, however it was not the student that ended up at college or would have ended up with a good chance at the fat scholarship.

This dynamic is still working in our school system. Only the potential $175,000 prize makes the dynamic even more brutal. All that it takes is one teacher or administrator that favors one student over another. Children of teachers and administrators are competing for this big fat cash award. Students from dubious family backgrounds are pretty easily eliminated from the competition. These students neither have the needed social skills to stay out of trouble nor have the needed connections to later get them out of trouble.

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The Starke County Community Foundation Lilly Endowment Community Scholars award is a merit award.

Start kicking your kid’s butt now to win $175,000

...........Joan Miró i Ferrà, man Kicking Stone with Bird........
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Today's trivia question to prepare you for the “Clash of Civilizations”.

What is schmaltz?

Click here and Scoll down to "Interests" for the answer.

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The Lilly family has been generous. The wealth of Lilly Foundation is nearly unlimited. The Lilly foundation has financed Community Foundations across Indiana. That includes our Starke County Community Foundation. The pride and joy of the foundation is the Starke County Community Foundation Lilly Endowment Community Scholars. This is an astoundingly generous, 4-year full tuition scholarship to any Indiana College. The future value of this scholarship at Notre Dame is about $175,000. WOW!!! This is far and away the biggest thing that the Starke Foundation does. Some years they give away 3 of these!

This is a gigantic amount of money. How are the recipients chosen? After reading the Community Foundation’s web site and the web site of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program it seems that any local graduating Senior may apply. Not much information about the actual selection criteria was available. In 2003 they were more informative than years since. Here is a quote from the 2003 information: “The selection of nominees was done in two phases. During the first phase, students were scored on their application essay, their SAT scores, their GPA, curriculum difficulty, their school and community activities, work experience and letters of recommendation. Twelve students were selected to advance to the second or final phase. During the final phase, the students wrote an impromptu essay and interviewed with the Starke County Community Foundation Scholarship Committee.” The 2006 selection seems to indicate that the Independent Colleges of Indiana makes the final choice from the finalist pool. However information from prior years indicated that only the nominees and an alternate were sent to ICI. Other information on the site stated a somewhat different process. In any case, presumably ICI generally accepts the nominees named by the committee.

This type of scholarship is called a merit scholarship as opposed to a need scholarship. In the criteria there was no mention of student need as a factor. Since 2002 there have been 8 boys and 5 girls with 7 from North Judson, 2 from Knox, 3 from Oregon Davis, and 1 from the Indiana Academy. North Judson has done quite well. I would say that North Judson students tend to be better qualified because the school has a strong tradition of nurturing their most talented students. Their continuing success at in the Academic Bowl competition is proof of that.

I suggest that all Knox parents understand and then explain this program to their child. I think you should start at about age 5 and keep mentioning it. Tell them, “I expect you to win this!” Consider that there are only about 230 graduates in the pool. Only about 120 of these students even expect to go to college. ONLY 20 STUDENTS EVEN BOTHER APPLYING! In a good year 3 scholarships are awarded. Your child’s chance is 3 out of 20, 15% to win $175,000. And you don’t even have to scratch that awful silver/gray dust off a lottery ticket.

After studying the past winners, I can give you the best strategy:
1. Move to North Judson
2. Be Middle-Class. Being a teacher is good.
3. Avoid divorce and other conspicuous bad behavior.
4. Go to a mainstream Protestant Church and make sure that your kid is very active.

5. Make your kid volunteer at the nursing home.
6. Make sure your kid is popular; Student Body President is best.
7. Your kid’s Music and Sports successes are biggies.
8. Teach your kid to write an essay. Some schmaltz is good.
9. Teach you kid to say ma’am and sir.
10. Teach your kid to look adults in the eye.
11. Teach your kid not to mumble.
12. Your kid will need good grades (bummer).
13. Your kid will need good SATs (bummer).
14. Best Bet: Get to know people on the selection committee!

I suppose that you are wondering when I was going to start grousing about the program? Next time.