by Kelly Fletcher
When you hit senior year all you hear about is college. Everyone wants to know where you want to go to school, what you plan on majoring in, and what your plans are for when you get there. You, however, are busy worrying about grades, extra curriculars, college essays, and getting a high enough ACT score. Then suddenly all that’s over. You apply and get into one of the schools you had been hoping for and you start to have answers to all the questions you’re being asked.
And that’s when you remember about scholarships. You start to realize it’s not just about getting into the schools you have always wanted to go to, it’s also about being able to get enough money for it to be reasonable for you to go there. So you start looking into scholarships. If you look into the merit based scholarships you’ll notice what I did, most of them rely heavily on your class rank.
STA does not rank by numbering people off, but does have a rough scale based on what percentage you fall in. It was seeing this scale for the first time that made me realize what an unfair advantage this practice of basing merit scholarships on rank puts on high school students. The top 5o percent of STA’s class of 2014 has a minimum GPA in the early to mid 90s. At another school this could be much lower, but the student at the other school would have a better chance, because they would be ranked higher.
This is why I believe class rank is not a good judge of academic ability. It is judging a student based on where they rank amongst other students, not how they are doing individually. One school could have a student with a 90 percent GPA in the top 25 percent, but a girl in STA’s class of 2014 with that GPA would not even be in the top 50 percent. This makes a more qualified student less likely to receive a scholarship less qualified students at other schools are receiving.
Merit based scholarships should be based solely on academic performance. If this were the case, students at all schools, no matter where they rank, would have the same chance as each other and be judged equally. Merit based scholarships would start to actually be based on how well a student learns rather than how well they look compared to others, and that would make all the difference.
Madeline • Nov 22, 2013 at 8:07 am
Kelly I love this article! It is so true!
It actually baffles me that colleges haven’t realized how unfair this system is, not just to the students but to them. As you mentioned, they probably end up giving their scholarships to less deserving students because of it.
Robin • Nov 20, 2013 at 2:17 pm
I agree with this completely. If you are wanted to go to school for something like tech theater or art, your academic performance won’t be taken too much into account. So someone can be an amazing artist but have a lower GPA. That doesn’t mean that they are lower than other students, they just aren’t that successful in some areas.