How hard is it to get into the Johnson Scholars Program? (And are my chances reasonable based on the information below?) Also, how intellectual is Santa Clara University? Like is it just pure ambition, or a mix of ambition and intellectual curiosity, or more intellectual curiosity than ambition?
Not any minority except a geographic one
GPA: UW 4.0 <–my school is in the country (in a flyover state) and very small, so we have no in person APs, but I did convince the principal to let me take 3 online, plus 2 dual-credit classes. There’s no weighted GPA
Class Rank: 1/54
ACT: 36
ECs: The typical stuff: Cross Country (state winners and runner-ups), Track (have placed at state), Speech (two-event nationals qualifier in the year of corona),
National Honor Society prez, a lot of 4-H (I raise goats, lead a section of an overnight lock-in, and teach/help with some other camps), StuCo, and volunteer teach guitar. The interesting stuff:
Polyglot: English, French, Spanish, German, and Latin.
Filed a provisional patent and started a licensing biz
@TheJohnboi I have a few friends who are Johnson Scholars and it is not something that is easy to get as there are only a few each year making up 1% or less of your class. If you want to get a better idea of who the students are in the Johnson program check out this link and you can read the bios of everyone. Additionally, review the requirements to maintain these scholarships as it can be very difficult to maintain a high gpa in certain majors.
I would recommend to apply for these scholarships regardless as many students at SCU do receive some form of financial aid even if they do not receive these top tier scholarships.
To address your intellectual question I think you will find a mix of everything amongst your peers. Some will be highly ambitious, other driven by curiosity.
I just received an email saying that I am a Johnson Scholar semi-finalist. The email says that I will receive “instructions on how to submit the video interview” and that it will be due March 14th. Does anybody know how this works? Is it not a virtual interview/group discussion but instead a self-upload format?
Hi! I was just notified today that I was a Johnson Scholar semi-finalist as well! The interview is essentially a self-recorded interview of yourself answering 3 questions in a timely manner. There are no re-do’s.
yes- seems weird when they haven’t yet been accepted. The details about the timing of the scholarship suggest the finalists are not selected until REALLY late in the process. at that point, seems like students would have to have made their decisions about where they want to go (which could be hard to do without info about scholarships). good luck!