THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JENNIFER DZIURA
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS process generally shoots bolts of terror down the vertebral columns of high school students. Some of us are anguished because we have come to the realization that M.I.T. officials would rather burn their campus than allow us to walk on it. Some of us are distressed because a year's tuition rivals our family's annual income.
The cure for the latter angst comes in the form of scholarships. These fistfuls of cash are allegedly abundant - the Tylenol company, the American Legion and the Smithsonian Institution all offer versions of a post-secondary education lottery. It's finding the darn scholarships that can be tough.
Take, for example, the Tylenol scholarship. How would the average high school student have the slightest clue as to which pain reliever companies offer scholarships and which don't? It's not as if the label on the Tylenol bottle states ``Ages 12 and up: Take two caplets every four hours. High school seniors: To win a scholarship, write an essay about the American flag.''
On a personal quest for higher-education funds, I plumbed libraries and bookstores for scholarship books. My first experience was with a 6-pound paperback titled ``The Scholarship Book.''
The volume contained exactly 1,730 scholarship entries. This might mislead the casual browser to believe that if he had the time to write 1,730 essays, he would have a chance at winning one or many of 1,730 cash giveaways.
Those who market scholarship books, however, seem to try to make their publications as thick as possible, probably hoping that you will pay more money for more pages. In doing so, they employ such deceptive techniques as listing the same scholarships under seven or eight headings, or listing scholarships that are only open to students majoring in Slavic studies at obscure colleges. They also include scholarships offered by small businesses in rural countries to their own employees, in which case the relevant parties would be much more efficiently informed by a handwritten notice on the bulletin board in their workplace.
The quest for scholarship money therefore becomes an arduous search through entries for scholarships that don't rule out almost everyone.
Entry (NU)59, for example, reads: ``Open to children of migrant farm laborers residing in Windsor, Calif., whose family migrated to California from Salisaw, Okla., during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. Family must have worked at least six months in the Hernesto Onexioca vineyards. For undergraduate or graduate study leading to a degree in business.''
Entry (NU)1380 states: ``The Ladies of Northants offers a scholarship to a woman over 40 who migrates to the United States from Northamptonshire, England and is committed to a career in nuclear engineering. . . . Preference to natives of the village of Podington who have a 3.75 or better grade point average. . . .''
One scholarship is available only to cranberry farmers in Massachusetts; another, oddly, is open to all residents of Jefferson County, Ohio, provided they are not anarchists.
Other scholarship guides are much the same. The ``International Scholarship Directory'' is written by the same guy who wrote ``The Scholarship Book,'' and it has the same faults.
``Free College Money, Term Papers, and Sex (ed)'' wins the plastic trophy for sheer bulk. Its 1,053 pages contain information on federal, state and private scholarships, grants and loans, and its data is organized in such a way that one can skip the scholarships available only to senior citizens employed by Evian who are studying the history of modern pottery in New Hampshire. The book also contains information on tattoo removal, hair loss and breast implants.
The only revelation unearthed by my research has been this: The best way to pay for college is a trust fund from a wealthy relative. If you don't have one of these, keep buying lottery tickets or prepare to wade through a multitude of extraneous data. Unless, of course, you have parents who are cranberry farmers in Massachusetts. MEMO: Jennifer Dziura is a junior at Cox High School. Her column appears
bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on her column, call INFOLINE at
640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write to her at 4565 Virginia Beach
Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462.
by CNB