oh nice! can’t wait to hear the story!!! people think we are crazy IRL when we tell them what we are doing! lol!
Please share on THIS tread when you do, or I might never find it!
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You’re not crazy, but rather brilliant!
aww thanks! both her and I have one big ‘fault’ we always say “we should have done this! we should have tried for that! we could have gotten that had we applied!” so we decided we would just try for the white unicorn! if she caught one great! if not, we would learn more about the colleges as we went on our wild search! we’d spend time together (she loves her mama!) and we’d get to go on some adventures (and we have!). love my girl and her adventurous spirit :)! she’s enjoyed every respect of this process, even the interviews so many find stressful! and we will have no regrets of not having ‘gone for it’ at the end :)!
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for the record, she does have the stats and ‘holistic’ stuff to get what she dreams of! but we realize how many amazing students do as well, and how few are available, hence the ‘white unicorn’ reference. not because of her lack of ability, but because of the number of deserving students like her!!
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Love this. D22 sort of fell into all this. She decided to apply to the Cameron Impact Scholarship, not because she really thought she would be successful, but because she could work on essays (and those essays were then used and reused). She never expected to be named a finalist! That experience was great and gave her confidence and we decided to limit her applications and to play out the scholarship/honors college string at each school she applied to. Now she is a Stamps Scholar at UO and the school is a top contender. The whole experience has been hugely rewarding and really helped her develop her interview skills.
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so cool that she got it!!! I think that’s where we bit off more that we could chew, we didn’t limit and we did all the scholarships/honors at each! and she’s still working on her IB diploma (gets a little intense senior year) as well as tutoring (that’s her year round job) and EC she does… she still stays ontop of it all… but I’m wondering if maybe her essays could have been better if she could have spent more time on each, but maybe not, she’s a quick working kind of girl, just works better under time restraint vs. having more time. anyway, super happy for you! send some of that good vibes our way 
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We came upon this because D22 is our third of 4 kids, and with the older ones, I always said, if you like a school enough to apply to it, you cannot leave any stones unturned. And that meant applying for any special programs or scholarships that you are qualified for. And here we are because of due diligence along with the hard work, service, scholarship, and leadership positions that were a part of D22s life experience thus far. To be a semi-finalist for a Stamps Scholarship cannot be faked. You have had to have everything that these kids have already to even be considered. They are world changers, these kids. So bright, they have plans and goals and places to be and things to do!
And I think they really need to have a genuine love for the school that is offering the scholarship. I don’t think this works if the student is not genuinely excited about the school for whatever the reasons may be. That can’t be faked either, imo. Some may get a large scholarship at a different school and choose to go there instead, but the genuine interest in a Stamps school has to be there.
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I definitely agree. With one exception, my DD won the full ride at the schools she was most excited about and did not get the ones that, despite being invited to interview, she was lackluster about during the interview weekend. They can tell and the want the most promising cheerleaders.
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This happened to D16. He was a finalist for the Presidential Scholarship at Villanova. He was invited to the interview weekend, attended classes, activities, slept in a dorm with a current scholar, and he said he had a fine panel interview. But we all knew he was not in love with Villanova. He did not get it and was offered a $17,000 per year merit scholarship and did not attend.
how many full-ride scholarships did she get to interview for?
the only reason we decided to do this was because my daughter did not have a school she really wanted to go to, didn’t really have a clue. otherwise, we would have only applied to those. a lot of OOS just going to visit the school would have been too expensive if we honestly couldn’t consider it because it was too expensive without a huge merit scholarship (so the only way to know if she’d get it was to apply). There are a couple of very good engineering schools in state that are top-notch that she got into, the problem is, they are big, too big for her, she’s not excited about them, so we went looking.
She’s often said “this would be so much easier if I had a dream school!” but she just doesn’t.
Winky- yes, I think even by the semi-finals (let alone the final) the kids are amazing, not sure how they can pick! I could never do that as a job! who’s to say starting your own business at 14 years old trumps inventing an app that is now sold!
We were chasing a full ride so she applied for 15 of them (was 16 but dropped one app that had additional scholarship essays for selected candidates later in the process). She was offered 13 interviews, accepted 12 invites, and won 7 of them. There was no rhyme or reason to which ones she won except those were the ones she ended up being most excited about except 1 she was really excited about but didn’t win. In terms of rank, there was a wide range. 2 were Stamps.
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wozers! what year? and do you mind just out of curiosity I know past stuff means nothing about today! sharing her stats and extra curriculum stuff!
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Amazing!
Agree with the interest in the school. The best thing my D did was to arrange discussions with faculty from her intended major before her interview. She was so impressed and excited by potential opportunities that I think that really came through in her interview.
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Sent you a PM
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Interviewed with the foundation today.
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congrats!
Hope it went well!
S22 has his finalist interview Tuesday, he is so excited (and heck, so am I)!
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Congrats and good luck!