[This thread is mostly about subjective outside scholarships – not automatic merit awards, etc]
Seriously! It’s not relevant.
I get a bunch of messages asking for my high school stats, because I won so many scholarships. But the reality is, no one applicant is the same. Yes, some aspects of scholarship awarding is boiling people down to numbers, but not all. Applicants with the same stats are not equal, because they will not have the same stories. There were plenty of kids with much higher stats than me, who lost to me in competition (and vice versa with kids who had lower stats than me, etc).
I tell you not to focus on other people’s stats because those only give you a good representation of like, middle 50 ranges of appropriate scores for a given scholarship. You can find this on most scholarships’ sites. It is no secret that most Coke Scholars end up at Harvard, for instance. You don’t need to ask for previous awardees’ scores to know it’s competitive. And more, you’re wasting your time, because nothing about matching or exceeding someone else’s scores will guarantee (or necessarily even help you) win a scholarship. You will never be the same person as anyone else, even if you match up or exceed them on paper.
There are lots of factors that go into scholarship awarding, and comparing people is not an apples-to-apples game
And also, it’s impossible for even the awardee to know, so there’s no good in asking me or anyone else “Why did you win X?”
I have no idea. I lost plenty of competitions I thought I should’ve won, and won others I thought I wasn’t a good fit for. Who knows. Awardees are not on the committee. Reading the “About This Scholarship” or “What We’re Looking For” sections on a scholarships’ site directly is really all you can do.
Not to spam my own thread, but this also applies (imo) to a lot of financial aid awarding. SO many threads pop up here where OP is like, “Jimmy across the street has a bigger house and got more money than me!”
??? So what. You have no idea whether Jimmy applied to FAFSA-only schools, asked for professional judgement, etc. Jimmy’s circumstances don’t affect yours, or give you any kind of leverage.
Congrats to Jimmy. He’s helped raise the property values in the neighborhood.
As for answering “why did you win X?” - I agree that it sometimes can be hard to know for sure. Sometimes, though, the winner will have a pretty good idea - telling about the essay they wrote about saving hundreds of thousands of lives because they cured cancer - is perhaps a good clue.
I can only assume that you’ve gotten plenty of messages asking for your thoughts as to what your stats were, why you thought you won various scholarships, and most likely, they offer their own stats and ask if you think they have a chance for scholarship XYZ, etc.
When I first read your earlier threads and posts about how you had done so well on the scholarship front, while I understood your intention was genuinely to help others, I was worried for you that others may not have taken it the same way. I don’t want to say you asked for it, because I don’t believe you were trying to brag.
There are a lot of people on this message board offering very good advice. But no matter how well it gets qualified, let’s just say this is the internet, after all.
I understand their question but I guess my point is, nothing about me saying “I cured cancer” will help them, if they didn’t also cure cancer by now. I feel like the kids who have enormous achievements already know it. Maybe others are asking hoping you don’t need enormous achievements to win? Which is true, though it definitely helps to do rare/hard things.
But haven’t you set yourself up to be asked those kinds of questions by continually advertising all of the scholarships and the large sums of money that you were awarded?
I respect your achievements, but come on Courtney, you have been very public, even using your own name and photo on an anonymous forum. You clearly want people to seek you out.
This post seems very disingenuous. You have exceptional, unique characteristics that led to your scholarship success. Others are not going to be able to replicate it, so it is really pointless for you to keep posting about it. Once you stop bringing it up, posters will stop asking for advice.
I think the disconnect comes between your average excellent kid (high stats - like mine) and one who has the same stats but has done something extraordinary. Do I think that my child’s interest in mentoring young runners is interesting? Of course I do! But I also am quite aware its nothing Coke worthy. We have tried to target our college search understanding that the difference between interesting and extraordinary is the difference between big name scholarships and extremely helpful institutional aid (as well as some targeted smaller scholarships.) If you read the bios to the big name scholarships (Coke, even AXA which we had considered) just being a great kid with great grades and scores and recs isn’t enough. Those scholarships require the extraordinary. Which simply isn’t something that is easily defined.
Personally, I’ve always found @CourtneyThurston to be very helpful and a breath of fresh, realistic (if sometimes, somewhat bitter to take cause it isn’t what you (I) wanted…) air. I thank her for all she has done on these boards.
I agree with the OP. It also bugs me when people compare stats of others who were accepted into schools that they weren’t. Then they get all snotty about how come I didn’t get in and you did? It’s more than GPA and ACT.
@CourtneyThurston has been very gracious in terms of pointing out scholarships that others can apply for, and the like.
Her point is well taken, and has been stated by others…each applicant is their own applicant. Each year is another application year. Each scholarship does its own choosing.
Knowing what others have done is largely irrelevant.
The scholarships in question are all competitive ones…all of them.
I don’t think it is out of line to ask what quality you think got you XX scholarship. “Community service plays a big role in XX scholarship” or “ZZ scholarship really looks to leadership so make sure you list every single office you held in every club.”
It’s often too late to advise seniors to join new clubs or put in 200 volunteer, but that advice could go a long way toward helping a sophomore. One thing I wish I’d had my kids do is keep a notebook of every teacher, every activity, every coach, every award. My kids changed schools twice so it was hard to remember everything when it came time to fill out applications. It also would have been helpful to get applications for scholarships a year early to know what was going to be asked.
I’m sorry to hear that it comes across like that, because that’s not true as far as intentions go – at all. I think at the heart of this, what I’m trying to say is that there are productive questions to ask former awardees (which is what I DO encourage kids to ask, and AM here to answer!), and unproductive ones. Unproductive ones include the subject of the post because, like, someone else’s story won’t help you frame your own.
I’ve posted threads here before offering to help with the scholarships I won because I’m familiar – though I don’t know what the committees are looking for exactly – with how to market yourself within the application confines of that scholarship (which is why I’ve listed ones I’ve won in former posts – I can’t help with the Davidson Scholarship, for instance, because I never applied. And I wouldn’t recommend asking me questions about Buick Achievers, because I lost.) I know how many words you get. I know how many rounds there are. I can give good advice to students who ask how best to spin THEIR story – but my story itself will not help them. Only, at most, how I spun it. I think that’s a valid question to ask. I think “yo what’s your SAT” (or even “yo tell me about family problems you talked about”) aren’t going to get you anywhere because my SAT/my family isn’t yours. I can help you frame YOUR stats and YOUR life story, and that’s what I try to do when helping.
But your main post is ‘ask me anything about scholarships’ and then you advise people to stop asking how/why you got the award. When they ask ‘what is your SAT?’ you can answer by saying “SAT scores are important, but there is no winning number. You need to tell your story, why your GPA is high because you made sure every report was polished and perfect, why you studied 10 extra hours a week because chemistry was hard for you.”
I get what you are saying, that there is no winning score or guaranteed GPA, but when they ask, you need to redirect the focus. And you have to admit that if someone has a 25 ACT and a 3.2, they aren’t going to be winning the top scholarships. Numbers do matter sometimes.
