Scholarship app-what are they looking for?

[Mom/Nurse2b]

I just filled out a scholarship application and I want it SO badly! It would change so much for me. They pay for your entire nursing program on the conditions that you keep a B-average and sign a contract to work for them after you graduate. To me, that's a pretty good deal right now, especially with the job market being so tight. It also has the added bonus of being at a hospital I REALLY wanted to work at someday.

The application was SO short. They asked me my name and personal info such as address, school name and location. I had to send in my transcripts and had to have two professor recommendations. That was it! The recommendations were forms the teachers had to fill out asking if they recommended me for the program and if I was in the top 25% of the class. I sent them out to 4 of my best professors and I know they will highly recommend me and I was in the top 25% of the class (based on grades and participation). My GPA is 3.869.

My question is: What exactly are they looking for to award this scholarship? I assume GPA and teacher rec's, which I have both of. But what if 10,000 students apply for 10 awards. Will they only take the ones with 4.0's and perfect recommendations? How will they weed through all of those people? What are my chances, realistically?

[Student4_life]

Your GPA is great, but I suspect that the are going do something like take the top 3x canidates (where x equals the number of spots available) and then see what the letters of recommendation say about them. This is based on the limited info that they ask for, and the ease of making a cut in applicants based on a standard (GPA in this case).

4.0's are not as common in reality as they seem to be here on AN.com. Using my state's stats only 1 in 200 transfer students (with 60 credits or more) transfers with a 4.0. Thats 0.5% of the population, pretty rare.

So yes if there are 10 spots and 30 4.0 students (that would require around 6000 applicants to happen) your chances are low, but it sounds like a local scholarship so there are going to be nowhere near 6000 applicants (6000 applicants is more than half of the total amount of new nursing students in California, so I am sure where ever you are there are much fewer than 6000 applicants).

Truthfully based on facts and not emotions your chances are good, not 100%, but good.