Who Wants to Be a Scholarshipaire?

This weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a very amusing but expensive little game.

LeTourneau University holds a yearly competition to award several full-tuition scholarships to the ostensibly best and brightest of its prospective students. Two years ago I competed in a group of less than 80 students; last year more than 90 attended; this year 115 competitors took part. All of these students had already been awarded smaller academic scholarships.

The competition hinges on an essay and an interview. This year I was asked to serve on an interview committee, subjecting well-dressed but anxious high schoolers to a set of ... interesting questions.

To avoid any trouble, I will not go into specific detail regarding the questions I had to ask. I will merely explain that they tended to be "icebreaker" questions -- of the "if you were stranded on a desert island, what one book would you most like to have with you?" variety. I sat at a table with a university staff member and two faculty members, asking intelligent teenagers to define themselves in terms rarely seen outside of motivational speeches and self-help books.

Our judging criteria? We had to decide whether each student answered for himself with "clarity," "poise," "creativity," and "spontaneity." In other words, shy competitors, no matter how well-qualified otherwise, were at a huge disadvantage. So were students who have trained themselves to avoid spouting nonsense. I was asked to judge how well each student could string pretty words together.

Several interviewees did quite well for themselves. Only two seemed to be having much trouble (reminding me of the hash I made of things when I competed). I had a lot of fun watching them answer the questions.

But, contrary to the stated goals of the interview, I was not getting to know these students. Rather, I was getting to know the cute façades they had built for the purpose of fielding our mooncalf questions. If I received an accurate impression of any of these candidates, they must be insufferably shallow people.

It was a fun little game for me because it was only a game for me. But for some of the people sitting across from me, that game will determine the course of their academic career. It is quite likely that some of the people I interviewed will not come to LeTourneau because they cannot reasonably afford it without that scholarship.

Perhaps this interview merely serves to balance out the essay portion of the competition. Students with impressive writing skills have the upper hand there, so students with impressive speaking skills are given an opportunity to display their abilities, with the few students who are highly proficient in both areas having the best chance to win the contest.

The trouble is that I know of students who have won precisely this sort of contest by deliberately lying. Knowing that their interviews were to be judged on criteria like those I have mentioned, they decided to put on a good show, despite the fact that this show had no relation to reality. I find that unethical, but I find this sort of contest even more reprehensible because it forces some intelligent people to be disingenuous in order to win. No points are awarded for critical thinking or common sense. A clever turn of phrase is worth thousands of dollars; a hatred of platitudes is the way of failure.

I also know of students who won these scholarships and then lost them. Despite impressive presentation skills, a few of these winners are not very good students (although many are).