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[FearfulJesuit]

How good do your grades need to be to get a scholarship in Amurica? Do they need to be basically perfect, or what?

Are you a middle-class, straight white male, without a child or any serious disabilities? Are you not in the military/ROTC? Are you not good enough at sports to play for a team? Are you not deeply religious nor planning on entering the priesthood? Do your parents not work for a major company with a scholarship program?
Excuse my cynicism, but as a person that just finished senior year and received no scholarships, I'm a little disillusioned.

Straight white upper-middle-class guy with no major disabilities here. It can happen if you get ridiculous scores on your PSAT and SAT- I'm a National Merit Scholar who got a 2340 on my SAT. Unfortunately, National Merit Scholars are ranked by percentile (top 2% of scorers are semifinalists, I think?), and it's difficult to raise your natural (P)SAT scores beyond a certain point. For the English and writing sections, for example, an SAT score is more than anything a function of how many books your parents had around the house when you were growing up. Studying does help, but only to a certain extent.

Also, pick your college wisely. I got into the University of Rochester, and if I were more concerned with appearances and college name-branding that's where I would have gone; but the University of Oklahoma offered me a very large stack of tuition wavers to attend. In my opinion, top-end colleges aren't all they're cracked up to be. They're pressure cookers, they're filled with pretentious asshats and it's more likely than not your most important academic advisor will be illicit Adderall. Plus, unless you're a really stellar student you'll have a much harder time developing good professor relationships, because every other undergrad will want to latch onto the professors, too, for grad school.

[Tawa]

How good do your grades need to be to get a scholarship in Amurica? Do they need to be basically perfect, or what?

Are you a middle-class, straight white male, without a child or any serious disabilities? Are you not in the military/ROTC? Are you not good enough at sports to play for a team? Are you not deeply religious nor planning on entering the priesthood? Do your parents not work for a major company with a scholarship program?
Excuse my cynicism, but as a person that just finished senior year and received no scholarships, I'm a little disillusioned.

Awwwww fuck.

[TamerVirus]

From my personal experience, I only know one person who has a full ride in my Uni (one of the most expensive universities in USA according to businessweek) and he's an Indian dude who got accepted to Yale. All other ppl are on aid due to economic hardship and even then then still have to take out and grumble over meager student loans

[Orange Wizard]

Scholarships aren't too hard to get in NZ, usually just by doing well in a given subject. Most of them aren't very big, but you can get multiple scholarships - I think, note that I never got any - and there are larger ones available if you do extra work, so I guess it balances out.

Everyone here thinks the education system is still terrible (it was revamped several times recently) but apparently it's a darn sight better than the US.

[Karkov]

The U.S. system is... Well.. Uh, it ain't great.  I'll put it that way.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Straight white upper-middle-class guy with no major disabilities here. It can happen if you get ridiculous scores on your PSAT and SAT- I'm a National Merit Scholar who got a 2340 on my SAT. Unfortunately, National Merit Scholars are ranked by percentile (top 2% of scorers are semifinalists, I think?), and it's difficult to raise your natural (P)SAT scores beyond a certain point. For the English and writing sections, for example, an SAT score is more than anything a function of how many books your parents had around the house when you were growing up. Studying does help, but only to a certain extent.

Nice job on the NMS! I also got into the top 50,000. Admittedly, I was in the bottom 2/3rds of that, so I only received a Commendation.

Awwwww fuck.

Tis the harsh reality of the situation. As an example, a girl a year above me at school was a lesbian Latina gay-rights activist, and received the Gate's Millennium Scholars award. I think she may have been first generation too, but I'm not sure.

[TamerVirus]

Let's just say if you're a first generation Native American Eskimo who built a windmill well in your tiny village in Guam, you'll be accepted everywhere in the US

[Vorthon]

...People still use 'Eskimo' as a term? I thought it'd been supplanted by 'Inuit'.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Let's just say if you're a first generation Native American Eskimo who built a windmill well in your tiny village in Guam, you'll be accepted everywhere in the US

/\ Accurate.


If anyone cares about my college experience, I got to where I am by taking two years to build a glorified pump for my internship.

[Karkov]

Nope, Eskimo is still used prominently in Texas, for sure.  I think it's something to do with the native accent mangling "Inuit."  I assume it's the same wherever Tamer's at.

[Tawa]

Awwwww fuck.

Tis the harsh reality of the situation. As an example, a girl a year above me at school was a lesbian Latina gay-rights activist, and received the Gate's Millennium Scholars award. I think she may have been first generation too, but I'm not sure.

So, what do you get if you're one of those shitty fetish-fuel fanfic characters, like those half-dragon half-elf sorcerer/warrior with one red eye and angel heritage sorts? An all-expenses-paid world trip and a scholarship to the most prestigious universities in the world?

[Xantalos]

You get digitized and sent to the hellish realm of tumblr.

[FearfulJesuit]

The correctness of the term pretty much entirely depends on the context. Linguists and anthropologists, for example, will use "Eskimo" as a blanket term that covers the Inuit and Yupik, but excludes the Aleut. And "Eskimo" is (for this reason, probably, because there are no Yupik in Canada) fairly unexceptional in most situations in Alaska.

Don't call a Canadian Inuk an Eskimo, though. That's an insult.

(My great-aunt and cousin are Iņupiat, and I spent a month in Nunavut in high school on an internship.)

[WillowLuman]

Awwwww fuck.

Tis the harsh reality of the situation. As an example, a girl a year above me at school was a lesbian Latina gay-rights activist, and received the Gate's Millennium Scholars award. I think she may have been first generation too, but I'm not sure.

So, what do you get if you're one of those shitty fetish-fuel fanfic characters, like those half-dragon half-elf sorcerer/warrior with one red eye and angel heritage sorts? An all-expenses-paid world trip and a scholarship to the most prestigious universities in the world?

Depends on if the fanfic writer cares about school or not. More likely you get a bunch of "Easy A" classes and the professors are all pedos for some reason.

[Karkov]

I think I'm misinterpreting something.
You're saying that if you are any of these-

Are you a middle-class, straight white male, without a child or any serious disabilities? Are you not in the military/ROTC? Are you not good enough at sports to play for a team? Are you not deeply religious nor planning on entering the priesthood? Do your parents not work for a major company with a scholarship program?

Then you have less chances of getting a scholarship?

Correct.  Don't be white and you'll get a scholarship, essentially.