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<p>Considering that McElroy is a student at the University of Alabama, that’s a fitting typo.:)</p>
<p>My daughter friends with a new Rhodes Scholar who attended her high school and (not Ivy) University. This young lady was not an athlete, so while athletics may play a part, it’s nice to know that it is not an absolute requirement.</p>
<p>My DD is studying abroad right now and visited her friend at Oxford recently. She assures me that the place is by no means “sub par.”</p>
<p>Wait just a minute. 
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A Truman and a Udall? OP, you know they list the winner’s names and schools on their websites, right? Either you just outed your kid, or just outed yourself (if there is no overlap on the two lists). I’m betting the latter but I’ll check later. ;)</p>
<p>FYI, certain law schools do interview. Harvard, for instance, does phone interviews (at least they did 2 years ago) with candidates who make the first screening cut. It is not the norm, like for med school or grad school.</p>
<p>Good grief . . . what a rant.</p>
<p>I’m a major scholarship advisor and the first (well maybe not the first) thing I tell kids who come talk to me about appying for the Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, etc. is that the chance of winning is very small no matter how wonderful they are. There are only 32 Rhodes Scholarships awarded each year in the US. I guarantee you there are far more than 32 fabulous kids who apply each year.</p>
<p>There are many reasons to apply for one of these scholarships, but it’s a crap shoot. </p>
<p>And as Curm so wisely stated, it’s the experience not the PRIZE the student should desire. Like Curm’s daughter wants to do, I have students who did not get the Rhodes who are currently at Oxford. It was important to them and they figured out another way to get there.</p>
<p>Disappointment I understand; anger, not so much.</p>
<p>Since I am a former sports editor, I want to clarify a few things. Alabama and Georgia State decided in July to move their football game to Thursday night, Nov. 18, rather than Saturday, Nov. 20. The reason was to give Alabama eight days rather than six days to rest up and prepare for their game against Auburn on Friday, Nov. 26. McElroy didn’t find out he was a finalist until this week. So the game wasn’t moved for him; it was moved to prepare for what could be the biggest college football game of the season short of the BCS Championship game.</p>
<p>I know this is a board where parents of really gifted kids come to share, but I cringe when those parents don’t see the giftedness of the top tier of scholar athletes. To say that an athlete’s “EC” activities don’t compare to anyone else’s is absurd. The number of hours they spend training, watching film, practicing and traveling cannot compare to any other campus club. (And since the OP’s daughter is on a full-ride, the argument that athletes are “paid” to participate doesn’t hold water with me. Her daughter was paid to go to college also.) And top tier athletic programs expect their student athletes to participate in service proejcts. </p>
<p>As another poster pointed out, McElroy is already in graduate school and got just one B in his undergraduate career. And not even a smart dog like a golden retriever gets into Bama’s Honors College automatically. (I know–they send our son at least one mailing a week.)</p>
<p>I am wondering if the grammatical and spelling errors in original post are just a result of frustration or because the OP wasn’t aware of them. ( or?)</p>
<p>I can understand being frustrated in a situation where your child worked very hard for something & you thought they didn’t get the recognition they deserved. ( not that I have been in that situation. )</p>
<p>But it is one thing to set up a thread to vent- many do- but to then attempt to discredit the process & others who are pursuing similar goals reminds me of the playground rhyme " I’m rubber, you’re glue- whatever you say bounces off of me & sticks to you".
;)</p>
<p>Well, I haven’t read through all the posts, but my son attends the University of Alabama, and I can tell you, it is no cake walk. So, I don’t think your little puppy dog would do just as well as the quarterback does in school. As for Rhodes scholar, I believe Bill Clinton was one, so it doesn’t really impress me.</p>
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<p>It was black Tuesday. I was in a pretty foul mood myself.</p>
<p>I am too dumb to quote the right way but you can’t put it any better than this point:</p>
<p>I know this is a board where parents of really gifted kids come to share, but I cringe when those parents don’t see the giftedness of the top tier of scholar athletes. To say that an athlete’s “EC” activities don’t compare to anyone else’s is absurd. The number of hours they spend training, watching film, practicing and traveling cannot compare to any other campus club. (And since the OP’s daughter is on a full-ride, the argument that athletes are “paid” to participate doesn’t hold water with me. Her daughter was paid to go to college also.) And top tier athletic programs expect their student athletes to participate in service proejcts. </p>
<p>-Well said olderwisermom.</p>
<p>OP, I think it might be a blessing in disguise that your daughter has been passed over. Now no one will label her a prestige whore. Try to see the glass as half full.</p>
<p>^ funniest thing I’ve read all day - thanks DougBetsy!</p>
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<p>ACCecil, when you want to quote someone, type this before the material you want to quote:</p>
<p>[ ] with the word quote inside the brackets.</p>
<p>After the material you want to quote, type this [/ ] with the word quote inside the brackets after the slash mark.</p>
<p>Voila, you’ve now quoted someone and quotation marks are no longer necessary.</p>
<p>Sorry, it wouldn’t let me type the words like you are supposed to. Does my explanation make any sense?</p>
<p>Another ■■■■■. Probably not even a parent. Sure does not sound like one.</p>
<p>If it is true that the apple does not fall far from the tree, methinks Rhodes picked up more than what was on paper about your daughter. though I do not know and can not debate the criteria for Rhodes or the fairness of their process, I like to think character should play a strong role in all of these prestigious awards.</p>
<p>Wow someone is a bitter. Get a life for godsake. </p>
<p>Rolle deserved it. Being a the starting QB of a national championship team is a heck of an accomplishment. </p>
<p>Do you have any idea what the origins of the Rhodes Scholarship are? Cecil Rhodes specifically cited academic and athletic excellence as criteria.</p>
<p>* I find it an absurd joke that colleges can’t move football games for extreme measures, but SOMEHOW the University of Alabama managed to move the football game to make it convenient for him to attend the interview. I wonder what is going on here???* </p>
<p>??? </p>
<p>Where did you get the idea that Bama moved a football game so that Greg could have his Rhodes interview?</p>
<p>That game was moved before Greg was nominated and before Bama knew when his interview was. **Do you just make stuff up for effect? ** </p>
<p>Since the game was moved before he was nominated and therefore certainly before the interview date was set, there’s no way that the game was moved because of him.</p>
<p>That game (the Georgia St game) was moved to the 18th so that Bama could have more than 5 days to prepare for the Auburn game (because of Thanksgiving and the Iron Bowl’s Friday game.)</p>
<p>*We treat athletes like gods and it is quite disturbing. He has no significant ECs nor is he a GREAT student…for Rhode’s sake (I don’t want to break a commandment so I will take this crappy scholarship’s name in vain) he is a Business Marketing Major at UA, I think our pet Chiwawa could make a move for a 4.0 in the same program. *</p>
<p>First of all, he’s a sports management grad student. He got his Bachelors in 3 years (grad in 09), and he will have his masters in May. </p>
<p>You have no idea how difficult or easy that masters program is. </p>
<p>If your pet is so smart, then fine. Let your dog earn the money that Greg will be earning when he goes to work for the Dallas Cowboys management next year. Then use the money to fix your - uh - problems.</p>
<p>BTW…Bama has a Tier I law school. How does that grab you?</p>
<p>Greg is considered one of the 20 smartest athletes in the nation - a list that contains pro and college athletes., but only 2 college athletes make the team.</p>
<p>*Sporting News released its list of the 20 smartest athletes on Thursday and Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy cracked the list at No. 20. McElroy and Georgia Tech offensive lineman Sean Bedford (No. 17) are the only two college athletes on the list that includes members of the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.</p>
<p>Oakland A’s pitcher Craig Breslow tops the list. He has a 2.93 ERA over the last five seasons, but an undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University earned him his latest recognition. Breslow finished college with a 3.5 GPA, scored a 1420 on the SAT and a 34 on the MCAT. The average MCAT score for medical school applicants is 28.</p>
<p>Tennessee Titans safety, Myron Rolle, a graduate of Florida State and a recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship, is second on the list, followed by Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher Ross Ohlendorf, who graduated from Princeton with a 3.8 GPA in operations research and financial engineering. Anaheim Ducks forward, George Parros, who holds an economics degree from Princeton, is fourth, and Harvard economics graduate and Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick rounds out the top five.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Give me a break, and remember my predictions bc. they will hold true.</p>
<p>What predictions? That he will win? I’m confident that he will. That doesn’t make you some kind of clairvoyant .</p>
<p>If you want to cling to the notion that all athletes are dumb, then fine. You need to believe whatever you need to.</p>
<p>Im actually leaning toward the OP being a parent, because I don’t think a student that was intelligent enough to win the other awards, would not make the grammatical/spelling errors, but also wouldn’t have given information in her post that made her instantly identifiable.</p>
<p>but it is pretty funny- it is like a parody of CC parents.</p>
<p>emeraldkity…another possibility is that the OP is a student but did not win those awards.</p>
<p>Wow. The OP is seriously off her rocker.</p>
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<p>I must be in an unusually upbeat mood. Must be the OVER THE TOP parade today. 
I laughed when reading the OP and have been laughing all through the replies. Considering black Tuesday (haha – before Orange Wednesday), I agree that the thread is quite amusing. It actually did occur to me, ek, that it might be a deliberate parody of a CC parent being driven to bipolarity by the college admissions “insanity.” Creative writing?</p>
<p>^^ Agreed. Sounds like somebody has problems with losing.</p>