Presidential Scholars

50isthenew40
Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:54:32 +0000

In CA, my daughter was one of more than 200 students with top SAT/ACT scores two years ago. If you look at the list, you’ll see the CA section is pages long! (I didn’t count them, so that 200 figure is a guess.)
The chances vary wildly depending on the population of your state, and the number of students tied with “perfect” scores.
She knew that the chances were low, but chose to do the application. I think she wrote 14? short essays. She felt that it was worth it, because she would have loved the trip, and would have loved to honor her inspiring AP Biology teacher. Barack Obama had just been elected, and she would have loved to meet him. She wasn’t selected, but had no regrets about doing the application.
I will admit that I left it completely up to her to choose if she wanted to do it. She had done such an amazing job on her application essays, and had written some fairly extensive scholarship essays, and I let her know we were fine with her taking a break from the essay-writing business.