<p>Our son has been accepted to Whitworth University with a half tuition merit scholarship. We just received a mailing inviting him to a full tuition scholarship weekend competition. Sun and Mon on campus, in which the competition "will include interview, writing, and examination components". Two winners out of 100 get a full tuition scholarship.</p>
<p>Has anyone heard of this or similar programs? What do they intail?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I’ve seen a few schools that offer this - everyone does it differently. Probably best to try and find someone who went to this specific school’s competition to get a real feel. But if they only choose two for full-tuition (assuming that many attend) it’s got to be really competitive and/or who knows what else they are really looking for on that day.</p>
<p>SOME schools will in addition to the full-tuition scholarships offer other generous $$$ to some who attend. So, it’s also POSSIBLE that by attending, even if your son doesn’t get full tuition, he may receive an increase from 1/2 tuition. Why don’t you give the school a call and inquire a bit more?</p>
<p>Good luck if you attend!</p>
<p>Yes, we’ve heard of such interviews/scholarships that are very difficult to win that entail missing school, hotels, and travel expenses. We didn’t bother with any of them. We mostly focused on assured high merit scholarships. </p>
<p>I guess if you were rather certain that your child’s stats/ECs/interviewing skills were so superior that he would be one of two chosen out of 100 of top interviewing kids, then you should go for it. :)</p>
<p>However, if you’re looking for full tuition scholarships, there are schools that award them by stats and not interviews.</p>
<p>
True, but they are not Wash U caliber schools.
1/2 tuition makes Wash U a bargain already.</p>
<p>^ This isn’t Washington U, it’s Whitworth.</p>
<p>Nngmm must be reading from his blackberry or without glasses. That was quite the misread.</p>
<p>^haha, true… better go and get my glasses :-/…</p>
<p>D1 attended the Shipman weekend at UMichigan. 50 invited and guaranteed about 1/2 COA, 15 who attended the weekend were offered full tuition, R&B scholarships. The weekend consisted of team building exercises, exposure to the university (eg. coming through the tunnel in the Big House), lots of dinner/talks to meet other students, administrators and faculty, and finally group interviews.</p>
<p>She was also invited to scholarship weekends at WUSTL and Emory but couldn’t attend because they all overlapped to some degree. The others had no guarantee, but Emory did end up giving her a 1/2 tuition scholarship anyway.</p>
<p>2 out of 100? Gee. Not good odds there. If there were no other scholarships above the one already granted, and the costs were not covered, I’d say it’s a no go. IIRC D went to a few (maybe 3-4-5?) , some/most with travel provided/reimbursed but they all had greater odds of upping the numbers than that.</p>
<p>DD attended the full tuition scholarship weekend at Whitworth. At the end two students were chosen and the remainder kept their 1/2 tuition awards. It was a bit of a campus preview meeting with other top students, my DD enjoyed it and connected with several people, thereby beginning school in the fall with some familiar faces. I would attend the weekend.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me any Whitworth questions, DD is loving it there.</p>
<p>All of the ones I mentioned were fully funded by the colleges. I tend to agree with cur that if you are paying, it’s likely not worth the long odds. I guess it would also depend on other factors, such as, how far he has to travel, how high W is on his list, and whether or not he’s visited yet.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Agree completely. When DS1 and DS2 got such invites, they both had already received full tuition plus scholarships from better schools, so it was easy to say “no” to an interview that would cause a loss of school, cost us money (travel and hotel), for the small chance of full-tuition. Frankly, I’m a little annoyed at colleges that send these invites for such low chances of award on your dime and with loss of school time. To me it seems more of an opportunity for THEM to get 100 smart kids on campus to further sell their school with not much expense on their part. The school itself may be a really fine school, but if you’re looking for more merit and that school isn’t one of your son’s top choices, there may be other schools out there that would award that merit w/o the interview process.</p>
<p>OP, is the school close to you (thereby not creating too many costs to attend)? Is your son seriously considering attending? Have you visited yet? </p>
<p>Perfect that there is a parent on CC ^^^ that has already attended this specific school’s comp day - take advantage and ask her/him specific questions to get a better feel if it’s worth it.</p>
<p>Is this the Mind & Heart Scholarship: $14,000 per year? I’m guessing it is as that is approximately half of Whitworth’s tuition. </p>
<p>The Whitworth website says that they award 6 full-time scholarships in addition to the base award. Has this year’s economic situation cause a drop to 2? If so, they should revise this competition as bringing in 100 candidates for two additional $14,000 scholarships is a big waste of time, energy and resources. </p>
<p>Edit: I now see they did the same thing last year for two spots … just awful decision-making or the lack thereof. </p>
<p>Additionally, for the Whitworth alums around, they might want to become advocates for a change in the whole process. Some schools only offer 1/2 tuition scholarships IF kids come to campus on a selected day with the additional carrot of the possibility of additional scholarship dollars. The beauty of this approach is the realization that these kid have options and just getting them on campus can make the difference on whether they really see themselves going to a school. That and meeting a lot of other talented kids in their same situation is a big plus. And let’s face it, if a kid isn’t coming to your campus to receive a half scholarship, it’s likely he or she was never coming anyway.</p>
<p>My older daughter did this 5 or 6 years ago. She found it somewhat stressful overall, although parts of it were fun, too. In the end, she went elsewhere; I sometimes wonder she would have decided differently had she never attended the weekend.</p>
<p>greger’s situation is a bit different from ours. Our son got into a school and was offered a 12k scholarship. He was then invited to compete for more money on campus, BUT the awards in part are still based on stats (ie: GPA and SAT/ACT scores + that day’s competition). Also, flying would be expensive if they were not going to offer anything to fund any of it. This school is open about looking at parent income assets as well as student stats when offering FA with institutional grants. I called the FA office and admissions and asked what my son might stand to gain in merit aid if he performed well, and whether he would proabably qualify for FA. He will qualify for some FA grants, so then I asked if the merit award from the competition is just subtracted from the FA grants, for which the answer was yes. I did not see any reason to spend over $400 for this competition.</p>
<p>Good point NEM, about making sure additional merit is not going to reduce need based aid.</p>
<p>The mind & heart is stats based and no matter what happens at the weekend, the student keeps that 1/2 tuition scholarship. As I recall there was some sort of a test of general knowledge as well as many team building type activities. DD is a non-stressed kid and enjoyed the weekend.</p>
<p>DD has also not found the GPA requirement for the scholarship to be a problem. I found Whitworth to be open to being flexible, though we have not faced the question of a sub-required GPA, I would think they would be pretty open to giving some one a chance or taking the overall GPA not just the prior term.</p>
<p>DD had an unusual HS transcript/ranking/etc as she changed HSs and also had CC units; I was pleased the Whitworth people were able to look beyond each category of numbers and see the big picture.</p>
<p>It depends what the school is offering, and how many people are competing.
My D went to two of these last year. At one college about 400 people competed for two full scholarships and two 3/4 scholarships. Attendees had already been offered 1/2 tuition, I believe. I didn’t really like the way this school did it because many of the “lower-ranked” people who were invited had little chance of winning. (Results were based on application, scores, timed essay during the weekend, and interview.) And, here’s the catch–if a scholarship was not accepted, the school did NOT offer it to the next-ranked person. Winners had many offers at other schools; they weren’t likely to attend this school. So the school had a big PR fest (they did put on a nice weekend for the visitors), but probably didn’t give out many big scholarships in the end.
Another school had about 100 people competing for 15 full scholarships (better chances and worth competing–also based on app, scores, essay, interview) and D was offered one of them. However, after that she fell in love with a different school, and her scholarship was offered to the next person on the list.
Nephew went to one at a big state flagship, thousands of people competing for a few scholarships. Unless you had perfect scores and over-the-top ECs, chances were extremely low. Travel expenses were minimal, so for him it was just an opportunity to visit the school.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Again, I think doing this (inviting hundreds to compete for a couple of scholarships) is a cheap way to get smart kids on campus (at the families’ expense) to sell them on the school. It seems kind of scammy.</p>
<p>I did one of these at Seattle University. Travel expenses were very small because the school is only 30 miles away. But some people did fly in from other states and we all had very little chance of winning. It was a good way to see campus, but much of the time was spent listening to a very biased lecture and then having to write a timed essay that expressed the opposing point of view. It did serve as a visit to the school and showed me that I did not like it. I didn’t end up winning the big scholarship, but got the highest merit scholarship offered besides the big one, that and a lot of loans. If the OP’s child is interested in the school and they are near Spokane, it wouldn’t hurt. If we were talking about Michigan or WUSTL with better odds, I’d say go, but that’s just me.</p>