<p>Are they all 4.0, 2400 SAT/36 ACT students? Or are things like community service, and EC’s looked at as well. I couldn’t find anything when I searched for “Presidential scholarship” here about what type of students receive those awards.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Dear NuclearPenguins : The final Presidential Scholars are typically culled from an EA pool of approximately sixty candidates. There is a Presidential Scholars weekend where the sixty gather and literally compete for the honors. That said, these are not all perfect board score and academic geniuses; instread these are fine academic students with a variety of interests and leadership skills.</p>
<p>Now, some personal disclosures which will help cast the rest of my posting. Both of my children are attending Boston College and both were valedictorians of their High School classes (now, a Senior and a Sophomore). Both are part of the CAS Honors Program and both are in the Honors Sections of their majors. Both were leaders in their High Schools but both applied to Boston College in the regular decision round. This disqualified them from Presidential consideration (although I have learned from my younger that three Presidential winners were from the RD round. Whether this is true or not is only a matter of speculation.)</p>
<p>Both of my students at Boston College state that there are many stronger students at the campus who are not part of the Presidential program but were regular decision applicants, largely given the desire to apply early and exclusively to an Ivy League school. This is not to disparage the Presidential community as they opted to commit to BC earlier and therefore won the right to earn a spot in the program. While it would be wonderful to receive such an honor, that is not the really the point of the Presidential Awards.</p>
<p>Given the need-driven aspects of Boston College, the Presidential program, while viewed as extremely important by the campus administration, is likely not the best way to allocate merit money given the pressure on pricing from other top schools. For example, rather than offering 15 top candidates a Presidential Scholarship, is a better vehicle to offer 60 entering students a $10,000-$15,000 grant per year which makes the cost of Boston College slightly less than an Ivy League option?</p>
<p>Thanks for that extremely well written post! Lots of good insight. Yea I agree spreading out the scholarships would be better.</p>