Considering the impact of geo-socioeconomics and their link to education opportunities and to some degree even achievement, we can’t say that there exist any predetermined set of criterion that would indicate the likelihood of an individual completing college at any given rate or at all. That being said, we have to consider what exactly scholarships are; most scholarships are philanthropic wagers that wish to give students opportunities to complete their goals and have a better life than they would otherwise. As with any wager, you will win some and lose some regardless of calculated odds and of course the wins and losses will be defined by the success of the student. A balance should be made by any organization that is to provide students with these opportunities then, because there is no real way of determining odds and this becomes a big horse race. No bet is really safe, but a gambler would look at a Caucasian male who scored perfectly on ACT/SAT and has a weighted GPA of 7.2 and this that and the other and because of society conditioning believe that statistics would indicate that he have a better chance to make this wager worthwhile than say a Hispanic female who has all the same achievements. Those statistics mean absolutely nothing to an individual though, and only serve to make discrimination that would lead to the above conclusion.

It should therefore be taken in two directions: comparative achievement analysis and need. I see no reason why a child of someone like Bill Gates, Oprah, or Donald Trump would need scholarships, but if somehow, on a criterion that the scholarship provider would determine, could demonstrate that they could better allocate funds and resources to best achieve some goal than another or most others would, I see no problem with them receiving said scholarships. Some might argue that this is what people are already doing with academic based scholarships, but there is no objective criterion that can be maintained and applied to all students currently unless they have certain contests and procedures set up, which most scholarships outside of essay (and even then) scholarships do not. GPA and standardized tests are not reflective of individuals, their learning, or their progress as each school has different systems of calculation (weighted v. unweighted), classes and varying degrees of difficulty within the same course titles (there was a good article on this in the Washington Post yesterday, dont remember the title though), and even schedule builds that might impact the way that individuals “achieve” certain objectives, take certain classes, and meet certain standards. The difference is that in relative achievements v. standard achievements, the former will show certain abilities that the provider of scholarship determines is imperative whereas the latter is dependent on meeting expectations, not building on oneself or even learning necessarily, and chance.

Similarly, just because someone has a desire to go to school and has no money is not a reason to just throw money at them. There should be some degree of investigation that would indicate whether the recipient of the funds would be likely to use the wisely or not. If a student barely passes to get his or her high school diploma, has a gpa of 2.0, and has a criminal record, they shouldn’t be barred from funds but should be closely inspected to find out whether they will be likely to achieve or if by providing funds to them one might be robbing another student who is more dedicated to their academic goals.

Tough question Dan, but my answer is a combined system of inspective analysis on both fronts.