<p>@Bonehead - Yes, it’s awarding a scholarship for merit within a stratified sample subset of a population. This is done all the time, both for gender and ethnicity. It’s a silly argument to say that someone receiving one of these scholarships doesn’t have to work hard (female engineer, NHRP, etc.). And everybody has things like this available to them, even if they aren’t a minority. Take local scholarships. Sure, the pool of people who qualify is less strong than many unstratified scholarships, but they are still given on the basis of merit within the population of eligible applicants.</p>