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Major Scholarships undergo changes
By Jane Stevener
Old Gold and Black Reporter

Both current and prospective students receiving merit-based scholarships will benefit from boosted university funds. The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation approved an increase in funding for the Nancy Susan Reynolds Scholars program in concordance with the university’s current capital campaign, "Honoring the Promise."

"We expect to enroll seven Reynolds Scholars in the class of 2006 only, and will then establish a likely regular pattern of six Reynolds per year," Tom Phillips, director of merit-based scholarships, said. This is up from the annual average of five Reynolds Scholars.

The number of Guy T. Carswell scholarships awarded each year has dropped from 20 to 12. Carswells were previously awarded tuition money ranging from full tuition to less than half. The new, limited Carswell funds are now uniformly cover three-quarter tuition.

The Standing Scholarship Committee recently voted to reduce the number of students receiving the Carswell Scholarship and increase their stipends, in addition to granting three-fourths tuition. Phillips says that they are "hoping to go after people at the top." This change came when the merit scholarships office was losing potentially outstanding students to competitive universities.

"Students are sometimes not able to justify the fact that their family might be paying more to send them here than to another university with which we might overlap," Phillips said. As a result, the student financial aid office chose to expand the more elite scholarships.

Both Reynolds and Carswell scholarships provide students the opportunity to create independent summer research projects related to the sciences or humanities.

Every summer, several Reynolds and Carswell scholars have done such projects as laboratory research in Woods Hole, Mass., work in Switzerland with the United Nations committee to address the worldwide AIDS epidemic and studying Vladimir Nabokov’s theories on exile in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The funding changes, up for Reynolds scholars from $1,500 to $2,000, were, according to Phillips, a practical increase. The augmented funds "realistically reflect the costs of these creative summer projects," he said. Scholars will now be able to apply for a maximum value of $ 2,000, but costs may still vary depending on each case.

One such example is the Geneva, Switzerland project by sophomore Reynolds scholar Joel Cohen. Requiring more funding than the scholarship provided, he sought additional financial aid.

"My project would have been impossible without the generous help of Wake alumni who provided me with lodging," Cohen said.

He believes that the additional funding will allow for more creativity in this summer research. "This increase (in funding) allows for the type of projects that do justice to the scholarship projects of ambitious and unique nature."

Sophomore Reynolds scholar Matt Fulton said that as a prospective, he was impressed by the "care, concern, and attention to detail with which these scholarships are administered."

Typical applicants for these scholarships are students who possess promising academic and leadership potential.

They have pursued the most rigorous academic curriculum available to them in high school, obtained a very high class rank, scored well above average on the SAT.

The Carswell scholarships also place emphasis on students who have received recognition for their extracurricular interests at the regional, state or national level in high school.

The Foundation also rewarded the Gordon Scholarship program for ethnic minorities an additional grant.