Honors College Nonsense

celesteroberts
Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:05:19 +0000

Could it be that UK got more top applicants than usual due to the reduced UAlabama NMF scholarship and the new UK honors dorm? Seems like a bit of a disconnect in administration thinking. At most schools with big NMF scholarships, either honors is automatic for NMF, or if there is an app with essay, it’s basically a formality with honors semiautomatic so long as you make a reasonable effort. They must know that NMFs are not choosing these schools for the money alone, but as a package including the honors experience which makes the school a solid choice. If they want them enough to give away all that money, they should realize they need to make room for them in honors. Of course, they can run things as they wish, but I am just wondering about their thought process.

I sympathize about the essays. D hasn’t been denied honors anywhere, but for ‘wholistic’ scholarship apps for which her EC accomplishments not good enough to stand on their own, she has not done well. She gets stat driven ones. Her abilities lean STEMish and even for schools about which she is enthusiastic and for which she works hard on the apps, her writing level falls short, not mature and doesn’t shine enough to win them over. It’s been a learning process. Had we understood the scholarship award process at various schools better as we went into this, might not have applied to many of these schools with big signature scholarships where she gets in but can’t win the $. Should have done more research/thought things through, could have saved time/money. Well, we’ve one left at home, so will learn from this experience and not repeat mistakes.