We give one scholarship in the amount of $2000. The applying student must have attended our elementary school for at least one year. And, the student must be graduating from our public high school.

The high school sends us the candidate's applications. These applications are numbered without the student's name. The application has the student's class rank, list of colleges applied to, a very brief financial section, a list of their extra-curricular activities, and their essay.

Each member of the scholarship committee rates the candidates on a scale of 1 to 5 extracurricular activities, and essay -- the committee chair will calculate the score (also on a scale of 1 to 5) for class rank (makes it easier if not everyone on the committee needs to calculate this). After all of our committee members have read and ranked the applications, we meet to put together our top ten list of candidates (a preliminary list of the top ten candidates is calculated based on average scores and on a point system -- this is a good starting point). Once we have our top ten list, we submit this list back to the high school guidance dept. Our scholarship usually goes to our number one candidate unless the high school has deemed that this candidate is receiving too many scholarships at graduation then our number two candidate will receive the scholarship and so on (they like to spread the wealth, shall we say).

Hopes this gives you some insight on our process

I'll start with what we did, but I'd like to learn more about what YOU do.

Our high school organization is a PTA. How many we give depends on funds available, but the target is 3 $500 scholarships.

Students supply general contact information, GPA, class ranking, ACT/SAT scores, and write a 250-500 word essay on the high school experience. (Their family must have been a PTA member by the fall deadline in order to apply.)

The rating system the committee used last year was weighted average of the various components with the essay counting for 40%. Since there was little differential in points awarded for the other areas - the essay truly became the deciding factor.

The task of developing and applying good criteria is really hard for this type of thing, and I'm trying to write recommendations for next year.

I'd love to hear from anyone else.

For any of you who give high school scholarships, can you share:

1. How many do you give?
2. In what amount?
3. What is the application process (how much information does the student provide)?
4. What is the criteria for awarding the scholarship? (as much detail as possible)