It's Back! The $1,000 College Visit Report Scholarship!

We’re bringing back last year’s popular College Visit Report Scholarship! The timing is perfect - it gives you something to do while waiting for your last acceptance letters, and you may have some exciting new [college</a> visits](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/]college”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/) in the next few weeks either during Spring Break or on Accepted Student weekends.

Want to add $1,000 to your college fund? (Or, if you are a parent, to your student’s college fund?) It may not pay your tuition at Harvard, but it ought to cover books for a semester or two, or maybe your trip home at Christmas break! And, as a bonus, you can help your fellow CC members by sharing your own college trip experiences.

We know our CC members have already made thousands of college visits and will be making thousands more in the coming months. To encourage our members to share their experiences with others, we’re going to offer a $1,000 scholarship and CC gear to members who submit qualifying visit reports. Here’s how it works:

From all visit reports submitted between March 1, 2008 and May 30, 2008, we will randomly select 25 “semifinalists” and review the reports individually. All reports that, as determined by our panel of judges, include sufficient detail and narrative to be helpful, will qualify as “finalists”. (Our panelists won’t be unreasonable, but they will reject reports that are lacking in specific information or are of questionable authenticity. These editorial decisions are final.)

From this group, one report will be randomly selected, and the CC member who submitted that report will receive the scholarship. The other finalists will receive [CC</a> gear<a href=“hats,%20t-shirts,%20etc.”>/url</a>

This scholarship is available to all registered CC members who will be enrolled in a four-year undergraduate school by the fall of 2008. CC members who are parents of students meeting those criteria may also submit visit reports on behalf of their student. We will contact winners by private message and/or by the account email. In the event that we don’t receive a reply in seven days, or if the member is found to not meet the stated eligibility requirements, that member will forfeit the prize and we’ll select another report randomly from our finalist group for the scholarship. Be sure your account email is up to date and that collegeconfidential.com is a “safe” sender!

**Every college trip is unique, and often a short visit doesn’t provide a complete or accurate picture of what a college is really like. If we can share the experiences of many members, though, we’ll help fill in the blanks and enable our members to more fully experience each college.<a href=“Even%20if%20you%20aren’t%20in%20the%20running%20for%20the%20scholarship,%20feel%20free%20to%20share%20your%20visit%20experiences%20with%20others…%20every%20little%20bit%20helps!”>/b</a>

Want to read about some college visits, or post your own?

Trying to learn more about a school? Be sure to check each college’s home page in CC’s college visits area, like [Columbia</a> University](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/columbia-university]Columbia”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/columbia-university). You can look at summary ratings, click through to any individual report, and even drill down to look at detailed comments on topics like [Yale</a> dorms](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/yale-university/comments11.html]Yale”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/yale-university/comments11.html).

Just to be clear, it will be visit reports that are chosen, not individual members. Hence, if you submit reports for multiple colleges, your chance of selection as a semifinalists is higher. Duplicate reports, reports that are submitted by phony users or by the same user under multiple user IDs, reports of questionable authenticity, etc. will be removed from consideration.

Thanks for sharing, and good luck!

Sound cool I would love to read some of these.

Is there an age restriction on these for the student? The form asks for high school graduation year, but only goes back to 2002. Some of us are non-traditional re-entry students.

-_- I was hoping it was 1,000 to go visit colleges.

Just use the oldest available date, thatgirltoo. Nice report on Berkeley, by the way. :slight_smile:

^^^Thanks!

Oh cool! Too bad my visit report is from like Feb 22nd:P I guess I will have to make one for Albany then haha

Is there a way to view past winners, so we have an idea of what to shoot for (or over).

This is a really cool idea!

Lovely idea. But I submitted a Visit Report a while ago, for a college that did not yet have a single report submitted and it was never posted. I’m assuming that’s because it was not an ivy/highly prestigious/very exclusive university. Still, it was a highly regarded engineering university that other families might be interested in. I’m not that concerned with losing out in the $1000. Just wondering whether I should bother posting other reports for non-top-tier schools.

Are we automatically considered when we send in a College Visit Report, or is there some sort of form to fill out? Thanks.

Nope, it’s automatic, spiffystars.

Archiemom, it’s not possible to submit a report for a college that isn’t listed. If you find the school in the entry list, you’ll be able to submit the report. And, once the report is submitted, that school will also appear in the “browse” lists. I’m guessing the report you submitted didn’t take for some reason. Please try again, and sorry about the problem.

I won this over the summer…I’d rather not post the report right now because it was for what ended up being my top choice school which rejected me a few days ago.

I may post it later when I get over the rejection.

On a happier note, would I be eligible for an award again when I write up my visit report for Notre Dame, where I will be visiting next week (where I was admitted EA!!)?
Whether or not I will be eligible for another award will have no bearing on whether or not I write up a report, because I view it as a sort of service to next year’s set of applicants, and it really doesn’t take all that long…20-30 minutes tops.

is this contest still going on?

Yes, lindz126, it runs through May 30.

You should extend the time period because most orientations are in June or July.

Well, we want to bring closure to this event so that those who have already participated have a chance to benefit!