<p>Some scholarships require residence in particular communities, neighborhoods, counties, cities, and and general areas. </p>
<p>If a scholarship says that a requirement is, for instance, residence in the “Metropolitan” Chicago area; is that distinctly different from the “Greater” Chicago area? Does metropolitan refer to the proper city limits of a location and greater refer/include the immediate surrounding suburbs? </p>
<p>Or, to put it more simply. Can/Could a student living in Greater Chicago apply for a scholarship that says “Residence in Metropolitan Chicago area?” I’ve heard the terms “Metro” and “Greater” used in the same phrase as in “Greater Chicago Metropolitan region.” </p>
<p>I think you need to explore the issue directly with the scholarship committees themselves. Greater Chicago includes a pretty wide territory. I live in NW Indiana and kids from our school can apply for a few scholarships that specify Greater Chicago. Others are Cook county alone. </p>
<p>Yeah, when people use made-up terms like that you really need to clarify what they mean. You don’t want t be the person who gets the scholarship and then somewhere down the line they see your zip code they say, “We said Metropolitan Greater County not Greater Chicago Suburban!!”</p>
<p>I’ve sat on a local scholarship committee and the language is intentionally vague. Donors typically have VERY narrow criteria- a girl majoring in chemistry who played a varsity sport who comes from one of the following three towns. Not realizing that in some years, no girls interested in chem from those towns apply. So rather than have the funds go unawarded, and realizing that the female/chem/sport thing are probably the most important criteria, the organizers apply some creativity. First we try to award the money to a kid in those three towns. Then we look more broadly at the metro area. Then we look at the entire county. That usually does the trick; the donor meets the recipient at some point- she will be grateful and charming and talk about women in STEM careers and how basketball is a metaphor for life and everyone is a winner.</p>
<p>Call the organizers of the scholarship and ask. They either will NOT award the money to a kid who doesn’t reside in a certain zip code, or they take a broad view geographically, based on the other criteria. But for sure they know.</p>
<p>I don’t know for certain what “Greater Chicago” is, but “Metropolitan Chicago” ought to have a fairly precise meaning. The Census Bureau identifies a large number of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, one of which (of course) is Chicago-centric. Unfortunately, it seems that there are three different things that arguably constitute the “Chicago Metropolitan Area”: (a) The “Chicago-Naperville-Joliet IL-WI-IN Metropolitan Area”, (b) the “Chicago-Aurora-Joliet Metropolitan Division” , and then (c) the area under the jurisdiction of the “Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.” See <a href=“Chicago metropolitan area - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_metropolitan_area</a> Of those, (a) is the largest and includes four counties in Indiana and one in Wisconsin, (b) is just the Illinois counties in (a), and (c) is (b) minus some of the outlying Illinois counties. There is also a “Chicago Combined Statistical Area” which includes one extra county in Indiana and another in Illinois.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about the precise definition unless you live in Wisconsin or Indiana, or Kankakee County IL (or farther away than that). If you do live in one of those places, it probably makes sense to ask. Otherwise, I would not raise the question; I would just assume you were covered.</p>
<p>As someone who lives in this area, I would probably think of greater Chicago, metropolitan Chicago, and “Chicagoland” (as in - we’re the biggest Chevy dealer in Chicagoland!) as fairly coterminous. I think much of NW Indiana closest to Chicago would likely be fine, as it’s pretty accepted those are “Chicago’s southeast suburbs”; the southeast parts of WI maybe a little less so, as they could be seen as more Milwaukee-metro than Chicago metro. Naperville is clearly regarded as a Chicago suburb; of that, there is no question. </p>
<p>Is there a link to a site which might help us determine what the scholarship owner is looking for?</p>