If you guys log in to your accounts, what is your application number? Mine says 2379 (you can see it when you log into your account and click ‘My Applications’). I’m wondering how much of it is constant and how much changes per applicant (ie, is it 237# or 23##…this may help us gauge the number of applicants).
@ninemuses 3371… When did you submit yours? I submitted it a day before the deadline
@DreamforIvy Lol, then maybe it can’t…I submitted it on the Sunday before the deadline, I think, so like three days before.
@DreamforIvy @ninemuses My number is 3560 and I submitted about two hours before the deadline. I’m not quite sure how their numbering system works. I think it’s safe to assume there definitely were not over 3,000 applicants; I hope this isn’t the case at least.
how did you submit only two hours before the deadline, because I was told that the link for the LOR’s only worked after the student submitted their application…so that would have given your recommenders only 2 hours to upload their rec’s ? or were your recommenders able to upload their rec’s even before you submitted your app ??
I emailed the Foundation and they told me that given the situation, it would be permissible for me to send them thr two letters of recommendation I had instead of my recommenders having to fill out the online form. I believe that a).they had very few applicants and were just wanting another individual to consider. Or b).they were just understanding of my situation and wanted to cut me some slack.
(my kid’s recommenders were irritated about that)
oh. what was your situation ? my kid had asked an extra recommender so there were enough rec’s submitted , BUT what may potentially have been the most persuasive recommender FORGOT to submit until the day after the deadline , ugh. we dont know if that rec will therefore be ignored ( they were able to upload it though).
that sure does sound good though if it seemed they had few apps even as of the last couple of days ! unless thousands waited till the final hour to submit , haha !
My son applied early deadline (May) because the foundation stated that some of the finalists would be selected from that pool and we had hoped that given the relative obscurity of the scholarship that this would give him a bonus. He received a letter in August letting him know that due to the very high number of applicants, he was not selected as a finalists.
His stats
UW 4.0 W 4.8
CR 3/358
SAT 1420 (old SAT) (This may be what dinged him - had I known he’d get 1550 on the June test we would’ve waited.)
IB Diploma Candidate
Varsity Cross Country and Track
Assistant Coach, youth track and field team
Lead Actor, two musicals Featured Actor, one musical
Pianist, youth choir
Junior Student Alliance, secretary and founding member.
National Honor Society
His LOR were exemplary from his Calculus teacher and a choir director he volunteers for. He wrote extensively about his work as a youth track coach and his desire to go into STEM education.
In any case, I just wanted to put that out there as a cautionary tale for those who think this scholarship isn’t being extensively applied to. That goes against what we were told when he did not get selected.
(and @splokey that idiotic form instead of normal recommendation letters was a source or irritation for us as well.)
oh, that is very frustrating to hear, delilahhxc. but about gpa and SAT stats and the kind of stats that matter most for college admissions though, i dont perceive this to be so much an academic type of scholarship as a community service and leadership scholarship. i am guessing that as long as a student makes it over the hurdle of the minimum required stats (like 3.7 unweighted gpa), then selection may focus most heavily on leadership qualities and community service
(past, present, and what might be predicted from the other application components to be likely in the future) insofar as making an impact on the world … which will be quite subjective, depending on the applicant pool. but this is only my uninformed wild guess !
I believe that the essays should be more about him as a person (qualities, hobbies, personal philosophy) instead of academically centered essays! His stats are pretty good (especially GPA and rank), but I believe part of the reason he may not have gotten accepted is due to the fact that he focused more on academics than personal experiences and qualities! Just a tip for applying to colleges! And yes, I may seem like just another senior who THINKS he knows what they look for, but I just ahd a conversation with one of the Amherst College admissions officers and they EMPHASIZED that they want to hear more about you as a person. I am here for a fly-in program (Amherst DIVOH) and a student actually asked about writing about the career you’re going into, and the admission officer stated that she wouldn’t recommend it because it doesn’t state anything about you. They want to read something that they cannot find in other parts of your application! Just thought I’d help!
@dreamforivy, my kid has amherst as a top choice too !! and this is my second kid to go to college…for my first, she got into colleges for which her stats were low and even many of them (that were colleges with merit scholarship aid) offered merit ( not need based) partial scholarships to that kid who had stats on the very bottom end of their accepted students stats…so you are right, the character and personality that shines through the “softer” ( not stats based) parts of the applications can and DOES make a huge difference, at least sometimes!.. i totally agree with you on that!
I wouldn’t have thought writing about his major volunteer activity (the coaching) would have been considered academic 
Honestly, he spends so much more time on sports and volunteering and music than most of his friends (always declining to join yet another academic honor society or school club) that if he came off as too academic centered it was certainly not intended. He did try to tie in the education because it flowed naturally from many of the other prompts though it was usually not the main focus of the answer. He brought it up because the website specifically mentioned education as one of the types of service careers they were looking for and because it is a somewhat unusual career path for a high stats kid but one he is quite passionate about.
I don’t want to come off upset or anything. At the time, we simply assumed it was the weak SAT. Could the essays have not been what they were looking for? Sure. In the end, it didn’t end up mattering because his new SAT score qualified him for a substantial merit scholarship at his second choice and we’re good. His college list was always fairly conservative so while this scholarship would have opened some additional doors, he is perfectly happy with where he has chosen to go.
I only posted my experience because we too had thought it might not be widely applied to and therefore not as competitive. I do believe this scholarship may actually be quite competitive.
I wish all of you the best of luck.
I can only imagine that there are actually some students (I know of one in a nearby town, but only one) who have been amazing leaders, started some amazing organizations and selflessly made some amazing personal sacrifices along the way that resulted in doing some amazing things to help community members in severe need (that were actually deeply helped in lasting important ways by the student’s personal efforts) – those are the students that really deserve the scholarship (not the run of the mill top hard working super bright students who put in lots of “normal” community service hours and are “leaders” of only “typical” clubs etc.). At least, if it were my money and I were giving it away in a private scholarship like this, that would be who I am looking for, to give it to…and for everyone else (including my kid), though they may be “respectable” leaders who have done a lot of meaningful community service and are also great students and great people, if they aren’t unusually and EXTREMELY extraordinary (and that IS so subjective) it probably is closer to being just a lottery ticket (we can all dream!).
@delilahxc Thanks so much for the info…I’m scared now, haha.
Wow…I hope you guys all win it!
I came upon this scholarship online and asked the guidance department whether it was legit or not. They called other schools in the region and the consensus was that it was fake and that I shouldn’t apply.
I will be very salty if this is real because like most of you already said, very few people knew about this scholarship.
Good luck!
I applied too! My essays were around 400-800 words in length.
I applied for another full-ride scholarship that was brand new this year and had not made its way onto the common scholarship search engines, and I was shocked when over 2000 people applied. So it would be nice if it was only us 5 or so, but realistically…