Yep, same story every year. It’s an incentive to get kids to apply to college at all.
However, there are too many kids now, motivated by entirely different reasons, who are applying to increasingly ludicrous numbers of colleges.
At this time of year, I indulge in college decision reaction videos. It’s become completely normal for students to apply to 20+ colleges.
Now though, it is truly absurd. Not made up numbers: 37 (not a typo), 28, 27, 30… on and on. And these kids are doing it for bragging rights, not for scholarships. The kids who are looking for scholarships in these videos usually state that they are hoping for scholarships.
These high achievers have no desire to attend 90% of the colleges they apply to. They cry when they don’t get into a “T10”, they inevitably say about any safety or match something along the lines of “cool, but I don’t wanna go there anyway.”
They don’t just want to get into HYPS. If they don’t also get into CMU, Vandy, Notre Dame, and U Michigan, they feel they have failed.
I cannot understand why high schools allow these numbers. It doesn’t do them any favors if their high stats kids continually reject schools. It puts insane pressure on kids. It’s a total waste of time for students to submit so many apps.
I posted this before and I’m not sure if they still do (new superintendent - our former is now in Fulton County (Atlanta) - but our elite school district used to publish collective scholarship data. So what the student did is sort of encouraged - not to his level - but get all the scholarships you can…which in some ways says don’t apply to non merit schools as much of the county would not get need based aid). I guess it’s good to be in the South where a Bama, Ole Miss, UTK type schools rein supreme - in regards to achieving this kind of $ figure.
During the past eight years, students reported accepting between 50 and 70 percent of the total scholarships they were offered.
That’s pretty high though, isn’t it? I wonder if accepting the scholarship has a different meaning that I think it should?
Our schools do something similar, but they add EVERYTHING up (merit scholarships, need based scholarships, and need based grants) and multiply by 4, and that is what each kid is listed as getting as a “scholarship.”
And then at our awards ceremony, they call up the kids and list everything out (even the need based grants), and they bring in the regular non-college bound classes to watch. It’s always interesting to see the reactions from the crowds. I know if someone listed the LACs CC loves here, they would not get much applause at all. But when younger S got an academic scholarship from Clemson, the kids went nuts. Football means a lot here. But generally, most of our kids who go to college (and there aren’t that many) go to in-state public schools.
The $9mn scholarship claim mentioned in the article is ridiculous. Every year similar articles make this kind of claim. Just laughable.
This kid isn’t getting $9mn. The scholarships from all his schools aren’t additive. He can only go to one school, and the largest scholarship he’s received is the highest offer from one of these schools. So something in the tens of thousands.
Additionally, the article also doesn’t mention how much (if any) was need based $$. Sometimes people lump together need based and merit based aid.
Yes, need based aid is not really an earned scholarship (although acceptance to the school is, so good for him on that). If the student qualifies for a Pell grant, and that is included as a ‘scholarship’, then is his total combining that? 125 acceptances x ~$6200 in Pell grants x 4 years? That’s $3.1M right there. He’s obviously only getting $6200 for one year right now (if he qualified). We don’t know how he’s counting all his awards.
Colorado now has a universal application, even to the private schools (although I think CC requires additional essays). All the student has to do is check the boxes of the schools he wants to apply to and all the paperwork is submitted just once. Free application to 30+ schools (residents). Maybe his state has something like that too.
I just hope their guidance counselor spent as much time with kids that really needed their help to either encourage them to apply or help them through the process got as much time with them as this student did.
Oh man… it looks like they updated the story. The original one talked about all of the unopened letters clogging his mailbox. I went to look for the date and found the updated story which does mention that. It just struck me as rather callous that he obviously wasn’t even interested in most of the offers rather than to add to his running total of $. One of the newer articles lists sites his college counselor saying one of the reasons he did this was to show people you can get great “financial aid” packages. No wonder the average person is so confused or ill-informed about the process.
I remember one of these stories a few years ago. Despite the much-touted millions in total scholarship dollars, the student had no single offer that was generous enough to make the school affordable, and she was trying to crowdfund the rest of her college costs. Counselor malpractice indeed!
Even my own kids’ school brings up this “total scholarship dollars” nonsense at their senior awards night. I cannot even fathom why this is a thing. If a person applied to 100 different jobs, got multiple offers, and bragged about the combined salary of all their offers, everyone would quite rightly think they had lost their mind. I so wish that schools and counselors would stop encouraging this, and educate kids about the importance of one great offer!
There are many schools that don’t require more than a brief application and no supplemental essays. He actually decided to go for a World Record for the number of college acceptances. Which I think he got. And I think there are many colleges that don’t even require a fee.
It really seems ridiculous and not anything that should be encouraged by any sane adult advising a kid if they are looking out for their best interests. This kind of publicity will follow him for awhile, and possibly not in the best way as an adult.
