$1,000 Scholarship from College Confidential

[Roger_Dooley]

Want to add $1,000 to your college fund? (Or, if you are a parent, to your student's college fund?) It may not pay your tuition at Harvard, but it ought to cover books for a semester or two! And, as a bonus, you can help your fellow CC members by sharing your own college trip experiences.

We know our CC members have already made thousands of college visits and will be making thousands more this summer. To encourage our members to share their experiences with others, we're going to offer a $1,000 scholarship and CC gear to members who submit qualifying visit reports. Here's how it works:

From all visit reports submitted between June 1, 2007 and August 31, 2007, we will randomly select 25 "semifinalists" and review the reports individually. All reports that, according to our panel of judges include sufficient detail and narrative to be helpful, will qualify as "finalists". (Our panelist won't be unreasonable, but they will reject reports that are lacking in specific information. These editorial decisions are final.)

From this group, one report will be randomly selected, and the CC member who submitted that report will receive the scholarship. Other finalists will receive CC gear (hats, t-shirts, etc.)

This scholarship is available to all registered CC members who will be enrolled in a four-year undergraduate school by the fall of 2008. CC members who are parents of students meeting those criteria may also submit visit reports on behalf of their student. We will contact winners by private message and/or by the account email. In the event that we don't receive a reply in seven days, or if the member is found to not meet the stated eligibility requirements, that member will forfeit the prize and we'll select another report randomly from our finalist group for the scholarship. Be sure your account email is up to date and that collegeconfidential.com is a "safe" sender!

Every college trip is unique, and often a short visit doesn't provide a complete or accurate picture of what a college is really like. If we can share the experiences of many members, though, we'll help fill in the blanks and enable our members to more fully experience each college. (Even if you aren't in the running for the scholarship, feel free to share your visit experiences with others... every little bit helps!)

Want to read about some college visits, or post your own? Go to College Visits
You need to be a CC member to participate, register for free: Join CC

ADDED: Just to be clear, it will be visit reports that are chosen, not individual members. Hence, reports on multiple colleges make selection as semifinalists more probable. Duplicate reports, reports that are submitted by phony users or by the same user under multiple user IDs, reports of questionable authenticity, etc. will be removed from consideration.

[Sheed30]

Holla, this is pretty cool.

[b4nnd20]

you guys have a thousand dollars to give away? this is a great idea but i cant help but think of the financially challenged kids who cant afford college and how much they could use this sort of money

[aquamarinee]

I'll be doing this for sure!

[Hamchuck]

dude, randomly pick one?

[lovin'life]

i definetly be doing this

[Roger_Dooley]

>>i cant help but think of the financially challenged kids

We can hope that the lucky awardee will be a student who really needs it. Evaluating FAFSA data was beyond the scope of this effort.

Perhaps there will be a self-selection process, like U of Chicago's applicant pool - those who are more motivated will be inclined to report on more of their college visits vs. those who don't need the money. At today's cost of attending college, though, I'm guessing just almost all of our members would put such a scholarship to good use.

[ridewitbd24]

yea, i dont get that at all either. why not just pick the best one? there is going to be one that will stand out for sure. to just pick randomly is kinda weird. such an organized process with an abrupt and unusual end. i still dont get it.

[coot66]

Seems cool. One quick question though- is it one entry per college report or one entry per user? If it's the first, I get feeling there will be a few bad eggs who make-up college reports...

Actually, I have another question as well. Anyone who'll be in college during fall of 2008 is eligible, right? So that means any student ranging from rising high school seniors to rising college-juniors(college), right?

-The Egging Coot66

[MBP]

ridewitbd24> are you going to read every "college visit" report? It helps them narrow down their search, and I can't blame them.

[Roger_Dooley]

We did consider that approach, ridewitbd24, but logistics and the difficulty of selecting a real "best" made that undesirable. I know that happens in essay competitions, but we didn't really want to pit CC members against each other in a "detail death match." Comparing visit reports might, in certain ways, be tougher than comparing essays. What about a report that was very detailed in the quick comment sections vs. one that had a great and amusing narrative section? (The quick answer, I suppose, would be the one with both!) The objective wan't to set an impossibly high standard that might discourage a member from submitting a report that was merely "very good" - rather, we hope that at the end of the process we'll have a lot of different perspectives on many different schools. The current crop of CC members, not to mention next year's, etc., will be the REAL winners if we accomplish that.

We also thought about using the Helpful/Not Helpful ratings, but with financial rewards at stake we didn't want to encourage gaming the system.

So, as imperfect as it is, we ended up with the above approach. No doubt we'll learn from this iteration and refine it if we do it again next year.

[CNI]

sweet
you guys are awesome

[treemaven]

I think is a wonderful, thoughtful idea. Thank you for encouraging the submission of thoughtful, detailed reports on college visits. That alone should help all members and readers of CC.

Not everything has to be 'financial need' based. In fact, I find it refreshing that others are given the opportunity to 'win'. Paying college expenses are a stretch for practically everyone, no matter how successful a child's parents are in making the most of their own education, work, and professional efforts.

[murkywater]

The people who need the scholarship the most will be the same people that don't have the money to make expensive trips for college visits.

"In fact, I find it refreshing that others are given the opportunity to 'win'."

There are lots of merit scholarships -- look around.

[Mackie45]

Although I agree with murkywater about expenses, I do appreciate CC's commitment to its members and i appreciate this scholarship.
Hopefully there will be more scholarship opportunities in the future.