Grades, Long-Term Involvement Keys To Scholarships

If higher education is the key to the American Dream, scholarships are, for many, the key to college.

Central Valley High School senior Melody Crick applied to 10 colleges and for 30 to 40 scholarships.

“I applied for anything I thought I remotely qualified for,” Crick said.

She is a valedictorian at Central Valley, with a 4.0 grade point average. Her background ranges from sports to dance to debate.

Crick received 10 of those scholarships and, given her final choice of schools, Gonzaga University, she’s using just two. One is GU’s Presidential Scholarship, $16,000 spread over four years. The other is a $1,000 Elks scholarship.

The scholarship game grows increasingly tough, as the cost of higher education rises. Students who count on scholarship money must start preparing earlier - even in junior high school. They must document their achievements; and pull down at least a 3.5 gpa.

Crick got serious about scholarships in her junior year, after $100 from the Masons helped her travel to debate nationals. Her advantage, aside from top grades, was a wide range of activities that started early.

That involvement is essential for scholarship - and college - applicants, said Pete Townsend, counselor at University High School.

“And not just ‘I ran out in my junior year and volunteered for 20 hours at the hospital,”’ Townsend said. The involvement must start early and run deep.

Sarah Scales, a U-Hi valedictorian who won a full-ride scholarship as a Washington Scholar, had experiences similar to Crick’s. She had the advantage of an older sister, two years ahead of her. So when she was a sophomore, she saw clearly the need for a well-rounded resume.

But what about kids who aren’t following in a sibling’s footsteps? Or those who are shy about getting involved?

“I’ve always been labeled shy,” Scales said. “I just grabbed a friend and decided we’d join a club. If you start right away in your sophomore year with one club and then move on to another, and then start volunteering, it’s pretty easy.”

Here are Townsend’s recommendations for a successful scholarship candidate: “They should start in junior high, not just with school things, but community things. I would devote myself to community projects and leadership activities with major responsibilities.

“I would take the most rigorous curriculum I could handle. And of course, I would take the ACTs and the SATs.” Also, multi-cultural experience, such as a foreign exchange program, helps pique the interest of some colleges.

School activities are a must, Townsend added. “Activities that involve sports are fine, but the students I see doing best are involved in leadership activities.

Townsend and other counselors say they’d like to spread that word among parents in junior high.

“But there’s no time,” said Sheryl Olson, career counseling specialist at East Valley High School.

Olson urges students to create permanent portfolios. These portfolios run up to 50 pages and contain everything from letters of reference - “twice as many as you need” - to certificates from hunter safety, newspaper clippings and letters of congratulations to Eagle Scouts. No accomplishment should go unmentioned: baseball field maintenance, perfect attendance, job shadowing.

At first, such a portfolio may help a student land a summer job, get into the college of his choice. Later on, Olson said, students should update their portfolios for permanent employment or when transferring between schools.

Olson not only walks students through this process, she does the typing for kids who don’t have their own computers. She also has students fill out a worksheet, specifically for teachers or counselors who agree to write a letter of reference.

Competition for scholarships is so great, “you have to have something to put you over the top.”

Townsend agrees. Good grades, he points out, aren’t a rarity.

In U-Hi’s class of about 350 graduating seniors, 68 have a 3.6 gpa or higher.”What I tell a student is, if you’re applying to a school on scholarship potential, below 3.5, it gets pretty shaky,” he said.

, DataTimes