University undergraduates aspiring to graduate school might consider entering the newly expanded applicant pool for the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship, which will award around 30 new grants next year.
Until now, the scholarship has been limited to students in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., but the Foundation recently announced that students across the nation now will be eligible for the award.
Pete Mackey, the Foundation's director of public affairs, explained that in expanding the pool of possible applicants, the organization will be better able to locate and aid the nation's most outstanding students.
Executive Director Matthew Quinn supported this idea.
"The results will be that people with greater experience, greater abilities and greater desire to succeed will be rising to the top of the candidate pool," Quinn said.
Although the scholarship's new national drawing pool will make competition more intense, Quinn conjectured that the number of applicants probably will not skyrocket due to the two-candidate limit placed on nominating universities.
Nicole F. Hurd, the University dean in charge of fellowships and research at the Center for Undergraduate Excellence, expressed excitement about the Scholarship's expansion.
"Our students are incredibly strong and can compete well at the national level," she said, citing for support University students' success in the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships' application processes. Nonetheless, the scholarship's nationalization will affect the University's procedure since it will only be able to nominate two students. In the two years that the award has existed, Hurd said that a total of 10 University students have received it.
Also concerning the expansion, Quinn explained that the move does not represent a major shift but rather a more faithful honoring of Cooke's original goal.
"It was our intent from the beginning to become national, and international, because that's what Mr. Cooke wanted," he said, further explaining that Cooke's Canadian birthplace and his parents' international roots engendered in him a deep commitment to internationalism.
The Foundation originally focused on the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area because Cooke, former Redskins owner, had "made his home" there. Two years later, the Foundation is expanding its scope, but Quinn argued that this move does not represent a huge shift: the Foundation currently funds students from Canada and Australia who are attending universities in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, and the Foundation will continue to focus on the area.
Mackey outlined the Foundation's selection criteria and financial details. An outside body of experts selects recipients from a group of students who have been nominated by their universities. This panel reads applications based on the qualities Cooke found most valuable: academic excellence; the will to succeed; an ability of overcome obstacles; arts and humanities interest, although there is no parameter on field of study; and financial need.
Based on the cost of a student's institution, financial need and other awards received, the Foundation then grants up to $50,000 a year to each recipient, renewable for up to six years and contingent on continued academic success.
Hurd said that the nominating process has already begun for next year, but fourth years will be invited to attend information sessions after winter break in order to meet a University application deadline in March and a Foundation deadline in April.
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