Merit Based Scholarships

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My mom and dad always taught my brother and I about the importance of going to college to complete our education. My parents themselves never went to college, but worked hard to become upper middle class and always wondered “what if” they had received a college degree. When my brother applied to college, it proved much more difficult than he'd imagined to get the money to help him out, and now that I am planning on completing my college education in the near future, I am faced with the same difficulties. In some cases I am finding it even more difficult than my brother did to get the money I need for college. The sad thing is that in a country that preaches the importance of attaining higher education, many students cannot afford it, making a once bright possibility, a fading light at the end of a long tunnel.

Colleges boast that they have the money for kids to attend college, but this money is often only given to those via merit based scholarships, to those from needy families, as well as those who have been donating money to the colleges and are therefore given admittance to the college. Although many colleges say they try to work with students with the above mentioned scholarships, it still leaves many qualified college students unable to attend college.

In Zoe Mendelson's essay “Paying For College,” she describes a friend who is having similar difficulties. Her friends' father describes their family as “in the nether region,” where his household income is “too much to qualify for substantial financial aid but not enough to pay that amount,” (Mendelson, 131). This is often one of the main issues middle class families face. For families like my own, who make a good living on paper- things are not quite what they seem. My...

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...ybe the kid is just good at memorizing. Colleges deserve to have their own admittance requirements as well as their own financial aid requirements, however, if a colleges concern is providing an education to students who want it and are going to make the university proud, then these universities need to come up with a multidimensional way of looking at a student and whether or not they should be admitted to their school and whether or not they need money.

WORKS CITED

Peter Schmidt "At the Elite Colleges-Dim White Kids." Rpt in Practical Argument: A Text and Anthology. Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell.Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 128-30. Print.

Zoe Mendelson "Paying for College." Rpt in Practical Argument: A Text and Anthology. Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell.Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 131-133. Print.

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