“I’m excited to hear that my story is being shared not just here in the United States, but globally as well.”
I seriously doubt the “shared globally” part. Applying, and gaining admission, to hundreds of colleges isn’t something that’ll make sense to people in other countries.
Interesting to see she picked high point when she had 230 other options, presumably all affordable with 14 millions dollars in scolarships. I really would like to see the other schools on the admitted list. I suspect that it’s not as impressive as it sounds since they did not include that in the article.
Each year, when I read “awarded $XX million in scholarships” it makes my eyes roll at the ignorance of these article authors. These scholarships don’t add up - if you get 3 job offers you aren’t getting 3 times the salary.
I find it all pretty silly of the applicant and the news organization.
But, I think it does go to show that any motivated student should be able to get admitted to college(s) with scholarship money. There are many posters on CC who claim it’s virtually impossible to do so.
I certainly don’t expect everyone to be able to access a free college education, as we all probably agree, college isn’t the right step for all. I do support free CC, and know some states offer that.
Yeah, I don’t love articles like this since I think they encourage all the wrong thinking about what this should be about for the kids involved.
But “kid is admitted to affordable college they are excited to attend” is not a news story. Great story for the kid, but not something that will attract clicks, so I guess we have to live with this.
I don’t like these articles, and agree they won’t be going away anytime soon.
And the high schools that add up all the financial aid that their students received from all their acceptances (by requiring students to give the HS all their FA awards for each school they were accepted at) and publicize that number…don’t even get me started.
Last year’s student “applied to 200 schools across the country and plans to announce his college decision on May 2.” Not sure why there was a need to announce. Thousands of students each year just do it quietly. Reminds me of a football recruit announcing his commitment by picking a hat at a news conference. “His goal is to reach $10 million in offered scholarships by the end of the month.” Not sure why this is a meaningful goal. It’s not a game.
I’d love to read “Harry is attending XYZ college and was accepted to ROTC and is excited to continue his education and serve his country”.
Followed by “Joanie was accepted to “college you’ve never heard of” so she can continue her study of Farsi and Korean and hopes eventually to join the diplomatic corps using her language skills”.
I know in our district, they tabulate and promote the collective of all students - so perhaps there’s some of that related - i.e. promoting from the schools to push this narrative.
Ignorant? I doubt it. No one actually thinks that students get to keep millions of dollars. It’s just a feel good article. Maybe silly to apply so broadly, sure. But I’m sure it still feels good to the student to hear so many schools say “I want you!” And I like reading good news. Roll your eyes if you must but I wouldn’t assume that people that want to write about/read about good news and smile are ignorant.
And that is likely why the students in these articles are usually Black – non-Black students tend to be much less interested in the 66 colleges that can be applied to on that application.
Does anyone know of follow up stories to these students who have gotten these multi-million dollar scholarship offers and hundreds of accpetances? Did they all graduate their chosen school and go on to live a happy and fulfilling life?
In this particular case, we don’t know the whole story, e.g., what was the family’s budget, why the student applied to so many schools (I assume some she didn’t apply to all and was offered direct admission), etc.
And that’s part of the point, the reporters might not delve into the important issues.
As for hearing a yes, I don’t think that’s a positive coming from a school that’s unaffordable (as the family defines it.) That’s just a denial and for some students, harder to process than a denial on the admissions decision. Not saying this student faced that situation (the reporter’s story doesn’t address that), but many students who apply to this many schools end up not getting many affordable acceptances, if any.
Note that if a student uses the https://commonblackcollegeapp.com/ , the application is made available to all of the 66 colleges, even if the student was really interested in a smaller number of the colleges (the application does ask the student to list the top four choices). I.e. a student may use that application to apply to a few of the colleges, then get deluged by admission and scholarship offers from dozens of others that see the student’s application if the student is attractive for those colleges to want to recruit.
