<p>The daughter of a friend is a semifinalist for the Coca Cola scholarship. In looking at the list of finalists (set out by state), I was struck by the way the numbers came out–North Carolina with almost as many finalists (109) as New York (115) jumped out in particular. Could this simply be because the scholarship is better known in the South, given Coke’s home state, or is it because the high school guidance departments in some states are better at steering kids into scholarship competitions? I know in my friend’s daughter’s case, it was her guidance counselor (at a Northeast school) who convinced her to apply for a scholarship that was not on her radar at all. That suggests that some of the best and the brightest may not be applying for these rich awards, which would be a shame. </p>
<p>I feel like this disparity obtains in other areas where the opportunities available to students vary depending on how proactive school employees may be. My son won a national writing award in high school because one teacher was a strong proponent of the competition (which required a teacher’s significant involvement). I think it was a real plus on his college applications. By the time my D, also a good writer, got to the school, that teacher had left, and none of the other English teachers were interested put in the necessary extra time. On the other hand, my D’s school choral group traveled to Europe for a competition–the first time that had happened in anyone’s memory (and it appears, the last time)–because the teacher really wanted to visit that country, his travel costs were covered by the company that arranged the trip, and one parent was willing to spend a huge amount of time on the planning. They won, and it was a nice, though admittedly not hugely significant, application entry and a once-in-a-lifetime- experience for many of the kids. Back in middle school, one of my city’s schools participated heavily in History Day because one teacher had been involved in the program for years; the other school didn’t participate at all.</p>
<p>I guess it just seems inappropriate to me that students’ opportunities for scholarships and awards should be so dependent on the interests and preferences of individual teachers, counselors and administrators rather than district-wide policies. School boards and/or superintendents should be focusing beyond curriculum and sports to make sure their students fly as high as they can, but ours don’t seem to consider that their job. Is my city an outlier here?</p>
<p>I don’t know that your city is necessarily an outlier. You’ve listed instances where your children’s school did have that interested teacher / vested parent who made the difference.</p>
<p>Certainly, these opportunities will ebb & flow, and students in wealthier towns near urban centers likely get more than their ‘fair share’ of a chance at such experiences.</p>
<p>I suspect that most school boards and superintendents have their plate full with providing a solid grounding in the basics, tho’ doubtless most aspire to giving their students an optimal experience.</p>
<p>I here you, MommaJ. I’m a student and the guidance department at my school (and I’m from the northeast, by the way) does not do much when it comes to exposing students to scholarship opportunities. Honestly, I did not even know that this Coca Cola scholarship existed until I saw threads about it here on CC. They definitely should inform the student body about these kinds of things. </p>
<p>Also, one of the English teachers loves to submit her students’ work to various writing competitions, and the students always win a lot of awards from those. But if a student does not have her as a teacher, s/he will probably never be entered in those competitions.</p>
<p>“is it because the high school guidance departments in some states are better at steering kids into scholarship competitions?”
I’m not sure one can say that a particular state, or region of the country, have guidance departments that do a really poor job of informing the students about scholarships or do really good jobs of informing students about scholarships. In any state or region, there will be guidance departments very good at this and very bad at this. That being said, I do not have an explanation for why North Carolina would have almost the same number of finalists as New York.</p>
<p>Our school had a Coca-Cola finalist a couple of years ago and we are in Sticksville, Midwest. I don’t think the students here have much of any type of the opportunities mentioned above. I feel confident that 99.9% (at least) of the student population/teachers hasn’t heard of Intel. When S1 was there I asked the respective teachers and guidance “which” AP calc and which AP English were offered (there was 1 of each). They didn’t know.</p>
<p>MommaJ–it sounds to me as if your school is doing quite a bit that many schools do not, but I do understand how you feel. I had similar feelings, especially with S1 at the beginning. Then I guess I lowered my expectations and went searching for most of it on my own. Thank goodness for cc.</p>
<p>I embarrassingly spelled “here” instead of “hear” in my previous post, and wanted to fix it! Anyway, I agree with you 100%, MommaJ, when you say that some of these scholarships are missing out on the best and the brightest students because those students are not aware those scholarships exist.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s always about how proactive school employees are, though that is the case a lot of the time. For instance, a ridiculously large number of Intel STS semifinalists come from Long Island - this year a sixth of the semifinalists are from Long Island. And it’s probably true that many schools in Long Island give a lot of guidance to their students for the Intel competition. But it probably helps that SUNY Stony Brook is quite open to high school students doing research.</p>
<p>There are certain schools that produce a large number of math contest winners - specifically some magnet schools in New York and the DC suburbs, and some public schools in the Bay area. I think in these cases, there is not necessarily a specific employee that’s making this happen, but that there is a culture in the school that these sorts of contests are important.</p>
<p>I thought this thread was going to be about the unequal opportunities between districts.
Why some schools charge for all day kindergarten and others don’t offer it.
Why some schools have 90% FRL and others have .9%</p>
<p>Both my kids went to strong high schools, and the counselors at both did amazing work, although considering one was a private prep school and the other an inner city magnet, the day to day problems were different.
I know that gang leaders probably haven’t taunted the principal of the prep school ( although as a twice decorated veteran, he is pretty tough), but even privileged teens are still teenagers.</p>
<p>D won several awards even though when she was applying to schools (14 yrs ago) the internet consisted of tin cans & some string, and as she is first gen college, she had to take it upon herself to find them. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t leave supporting students interests to district administration.
By high school students just need a little guidance and parents can provide that as easily as teachers.
Most schools welcome volunteers.
:)</p>
@emeraldkity4, maybe that’s somewhat true if you’re talking about college-educated upper middle class parents with the time and wisdom to hunt down opportunities for their kids and figure out how to make them happen in or out of their schools, but even with my post-grad degree and motivation to give my kids the best, I wouldn’t have had a clue that the National Council of Teachers of English writing competition existed or that there were international choral festivals that high school groups could enter, and with a career to pursue and two kids to raise, I wouldn’t have had the time or energy to run a campaign to prod the school into participating. My friend is well educated and an excellent parent, but if she had even heard of the Coca Cola scholarship, she wouldn’t have believed that her kid had a shot at it. And then there are the parents who aren’t well educated, or don’t speak English well, or are barely holding life together enough to put food on the table, or have a kid with special needs who sucks up all their time–or any combination of the above. Those parents aren’t in a position to maximize their kids academic and extra-curricular opportunities. We need the schools to step up to this role, but not in the random fashion I see it happening within a single district in my community.</p>
<p>@shravas, I agree that at some schools it had become part of the culture to support certain activities, but I suspect that in each case it began with an individual teacher, administrator or counselor who took the bull by the horns to make something happen and then recruited enough allies in the school or district to entrench that something into the culture.</p>
<p>Momma J - I 'm glad you brought this up. The HS my older child attended was not good about communicating opportunities ( scholarships and otherwise). It was frustrating to have a child who could have qualified/ benefited from this things , but as a first time parent I had no idea. I regularly look at the district website and have noticed that when ever students from multiple schools in the district are selected for/ awarded , that particular HS seems to underrepresent. I find it hard to believe that the students there are less talented, ambitious, etc. I have noticed that compared to another HS just a few miles away and with almost identical demographics, the other school regularly has more students listed.</p>
<p>I recently talked to another parent about a program her kids had done ( and which I was unaware of when D was in school) she had heard about it from one of her child’s elementary school teachers! No one at the HS mentioned it.</p>
<p>I addressed this with the school administration 5 years ago. They ignored me.</p>
<p>I see this as a wonderful opportunity for the PTA or other parent group to initiate and promote. It does take a village, and our schools are not uniform even in the basics, so why would they be uniform for the best and brightest regarding scholarships and outside opportunities? Parents who want this kind of thing need to get more involved and make it happen. Until then, there will be pockets of the well-off schools or those with large numbers of high achievers who have access to this information because they have proactive counselors or teachers, and the rest of the country. If the schools don’t see a need, they aren’t going to use precious resources on something like this.<br>
Get your PTA involved. Some of our best programs and ideas came from our school’s PTAs, and were later adopted district-wide. Parents have power when they work together.</p>
<p>Moon- fantastic idea. Why is it that nobody blinks if the Parents Association runs fundraisers to supplement prom or buy new uniforms for the cheerleaders or re-pave the parking lot outside the football stadium, but a request for a subsidy so the math team can go to a competition in the state capital, or to cover the entrance fee for Physics Olympiad gets the answer “it’s not in the budget”. Well- put it in the budget.</p>
<p>Thank you for this idea- if we all got the HS’s we live near to start paying attention to academic opportunities the way they do athletic opportunities, our kids would all be better off!</p>
<p>The culture of a school can change.
My daughters didn’t attend schools with football teams of any note, and elementary school kids were the high school cheerleaders at one of their schools, but the parent group did place high importance on arts opportunities, their steel drum band traveled to Trinidad, and in alternate years the middle/high school made the journey to the Shakespeare festival in Ashland. Almost a thousand miles round trip by yellow bus.</p>
<p>Of course the more emphasis districts put on testing, the more pressure on schools to eliminate curriculum that does ( in their view) not immediately increase scores.</p>
<p>One of the schools in this area was really hitting the Siemans competitions hard, getting kids in the semi finalist stages, getting a lot of kids involved. Then suddenly, nothing. Found out a few years later that the head of the science department was the shaker and mover involved in doing this and when she took another job and moved on, her successor did not continue the efforts. And, yes, the acceptance rates to the highly selective schools took a drop too. </p>
<p>So it does make a huge difference when there is someone who knows the ropes in a high school who is making the efforts in a lot of areas. Same with parents. Unfortunate, but it works that way.</p>
<p>People have to assume responsibility for their own success. There are many books and online sources for a myriad of scholarships. Find and use them.</p>