Sometimes It Pays To Be Different

Whether you plan to study wild apes or loons, funerals or fungus, sex, Esperanto or pipe organs, someone somewhere is willing to pay to help you go to college.

Billions of dollars in private offbeat scholarship funds go untapped because people simply don’t know the money is there - for the right candidate.

The right candidate for one scholarship was a “lady of the night” from Seattle. That short-lived educational adventure stemmed from a judge’s efforts to clear Seattle’s streets by providing prostitutes with the financial incentive to trade night work for college courses. To be eligible, however, the women had to have been convicted and acknowledge it on their application - the scholarship bombed.

But other weird and wonderful routes to higher education abound.

“Private endowments total about $9 billion a year,” said David Cassidy, president of the National Scholarship Research Service, which compiles an annual “Top 10” list of wacky scholarships. Among them:

The Francis Ouimet Caddie Scholarship Fund: $500-$5,000 to a student who has caddied three years for a Massachusetts golf club.

The International Boar Semen Scholarship: $500 to Future Farmers of America who want to study swine.

The New England chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance: $500 to college-bound high school seniors who are fat.

The John Gatling Scholarship, named for the inventor of the Gatling gun, an early machine gun: full scholarship to North Carolina State University to students named Gatling or Gatlin.

The Joseph Bulova School in the New York City borough of Queens: a $15,000 scholarship to disabled foreign students who want to study watchmaking.

The Billy Barty Foundation, established by the 3-foot-9-inch actor whose movie credits include “Willow” and “Rumpelstiltskin”: $2,000 scholarships to “students of short stature.”