|
Georgia HOPE Scholarship
"I’d rather my eligibility for HOPE be based on my SAT score than my GPA."
Listen
to this Commentary!
By Kieran Scarlett
Eligibility for Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship should be based on two main factors
your income and your SAT score. Since its inception in 1993, the HOPE Scholarship
has shelled out more than two billion dollars to cover full tuition at any one
of Georgia’s public colleges or technical schools. Yet nearly half of first
year college students can’t keep up the 3 point 0 GPA to retain it. Am I the
only one who sees a problem?
I sit at the top ten percent of my high school class. I see others at my school
who have lied, cheated, and negotiated their way to the top of their graduating
class with inflated GPA’s. It is these same students who are unable to break
the 1000 mark on the SAT’s, yet receive the HOPE scholarship, saunter off to
college, and fail miserably their freshman year. If the Georgia lottery commission
who funds the HOPE Scholarship is running out of money to give to the thousands
of eligible high school seniors, then attaching an SAT requirement is the best
solution. Compared to a high school GPA, I think the SAT’s are much fairer at
measuring intelligence. Adding it as a pre-requisite to the HOPE Scholarship
would dramatically reduce the number of eligible students, therefore leaving
the bulk of the money to students who need it and deserve it.
In a state where our SAT scores are near dead last, politicians are afraid to
require a decent score for the scholarship. Some people say the SAT’s are racially
biased, but I think this is an excuse to convince minorities that they should
settle for less because of their race. As a black male, I don’t allow my race
to dictate my success. I’d rather my eligibility for HOPE be based on my SAT
score than my GPA, which can be manipulated, depending on how much brown nosing
I did that year with my teacher.
Georgians should concentrate less on getting their kids into college and more
on keeping them there.
- Kieran Scarlett is a reporter at VOX Newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia.
|
|
