“Why should you win the president’s scholarship?” I paused, unsure how to answer my interviewer’s question. Unlike the other questions, I had not prepared for this one.
I honestly do not remember what I said, but it was probably something along the lines of “I’m a hard worker” or “I’m a good communicator,” neither of which are particularly good answers. I left my interview feeling not great about my chances.
For over 20 years, Union has been hosting Scholars of Excellence, a weekend competition for high school seniors to earn scholarships. Each student has an individual interview with two faculty members as well as one group discussion based around a hot topic and another group discussion focusing on an essay or chapter from a chosen reading.
When I went to Scholars three years ago, like many of the students, I was stressed about earning a good scholarship. It is easy to think that for Union and prospective students, money is the focus when it comes to Scholars, but that is not the case. The point of Scholars is not to make students a financial offer they cannot refuse, but rather to show students and their parents that Union is worth the investment. Four years can feel like a long time, but students leave Scholars believing that Union truly is a community that they can call home.
“For us, this is our biggest recruiting event of the year. Typically we get — I believe it’s like 65% of the students that come to Scholars,” Caroline Clements, senior enrollment counselor for Union undergraduate admissions said.
“We’ve just kind of seen that the experience of Scholars does draw people to Union, even maybe more than the scholarships do,” Clements said. “Some people may say that they need at least $6,000 more, and they’ll only get a $4,000 scholarship, and they’ll still end up coming because they can see the value in a Union education from that event.”
Beyond the actual competition part of the weekend, Union organizes the event so that the students can experience a little bit of what life is like at Union.
“The way that the scholarship competition is two days, so, like, the first day you have the President’s dinner with Dr. Dub speaking, you get to hear Voices of Proclamation, and then you have the opportunity to stay with a host at Union,” Prabhavi Aghamkar, a junior cell and molecular biology major who works in the admissions office, said. “It’s just such a fabulous opportunity to get the smallest taste of college life. You can go to a concert at Barefoots or see Blank Slate do an improv show — I think really helps to relieve some of the anxiety.”
Student hosts are one of the many things that make Scholars unique. Current Union students volunteer to host a high school student in their dorm the night before the competition starts. This is one of the ways that the admissions team helps to reduce stress, and, in my case, it definitely worked.
“You can sleep on my bed,” Jaime Christley, my Scholars host and good friend, said as we walked into her dorm room in Pascal.
“No, no, I can sleep on the couch, I don’t mind,” I tried to argue as I set my backpack in her living room.
“Maddie, you have to get up early tomorrow and compete. You’re sleeping on the bed,” Christley said.
Even though Jaime and I were already good friends, I have no doubt that she would have insisted on taking the couch regardless of how well she knew me. My experiences from the Scholars weekend I attended were echoed in the conversations I had with Aghamkar and undecided freshman Aden Bedell.
When I sat down in the busy Barefoots Joe campus coffee shop with Aghamkar to ask her about her experience at Scholars, she smiled when I asked about her student host.
“She was wonderful, and just seeing the dynamic in her roommates and just the way they interacted — they made me feel really welcome,” Aghamkar said. “That first night after the Barefoots show, we just sat on her couch and they were just talking to me the whole night which was really sweet. They just wanted to get to know me.”
I asked Bedell whether or not he and his student host were still friends.
“We’re in the same fraternity and so we are still really close. We talk every day and play music,” Bedell said.
Looking back on it now, what I really remember about that weekend is not the interviews, the questions I was not prepared for or the stress of competition. I remember having a blast at the improv show and playing my first-ever game of Kahoot with the other students between interviews and group discussions. Admissions counselors, student ambassadors, faculty moderators and even other Scholars competitors display how Union is Christ-centered and excellence-driven. Ultimately, that is the reason why Scholars is such a successful recruiting event; students see Union’s values so clearly reflected, not on a poster or a flyer, but in the words and actions of every person that they meet.
