More Than a Test Score

Meet last week’s Weekly “Three Sentence Essay” Scholarship winner, Andrew Kaye! With so many entries to choose from, it was a tough decision, but we congratulate Andrew on his great essay.

Here is his winning essay:

Our freedoms, as listed in the first amendment, are the only bonds that hold our country together. I believe that it is more important to have the rights of speech and free expression of oneself than to have the right to have protection. If everyone was free, we wouldn’t need to fight for freedom.

Here is a little more about our winner:

I am very outgoing and enjoy working with other people. I also volunteer and will get the job done no matter what someone asks me to do for them. I also enjoy playing tennis for the Basha High School Junior Varsity Team and I am looking forward to playing for their varsity team next year. I plan on progressing in the engineering field in the future because of an engineering course I recently took and found suitable. I am a straight A student and I will try to receive an unweighted GPA of at least 4.0 for all four years in high school.

Congratulations Andrew!

Thanks to everyone who participated! Don’t forget to submit your essay for this week’s contest and remember that judging is based off your profile as well, so update them before you submit your essay!

We love matching scholarships, dollar-for-dollar, here at Zinch, and we think Zinchers don’t mind being matched either. In fact, I think Ellen Wieberg is a big fan of the Scholarship Matching program at the moment. She loves traveling and curling up with a good book, and, apparently, planning for the future since she’s only a junior in high school and has already won more than one scholarship.

Why do you deserve this scholarship?

I have applied for probably over $100,000 worth of scholarships and this is finally my “big break.” Since I am only a junior, I think that this shows how dedicated I am to my future education and how much I want to succeed at whatever I choose to become.

What are your plans for the future?

There are so many options for the future that it is super hard to pick. If I had to choose my future right now… I would plan to major in communications and leadership and get a job where I would get to work with people every day. I want to have a family and I want to volunteer as much as possible. Basically, what I’m saying is that I want my own perfect version of the American dream.

What’s the first thing you would grab on your way out the door if your house caught fire?

So, this is kind of dorky, but I like scrap-booking a lot. I made a scrapbook of my childhood up through my high school years and I have probably spent like 100 hours on it so I would grab that. It is supposed to be something for me to look at and remember good times.

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

I would want to be able to teleport so I would never have to worry about having a car (or paying for gas money) and if I wanted to go someplace far, like Germany, I could just pick up and go.

Want us to match your scholarship, be featured on our blog and be one step closer to paying for college? Let us know if you find and win a scholarship on Zinch and you can!

We are happy to introduce Quinn Colter, winner of a Zinch Matching Scholarship after finding and winning a scholarship on Zinch. She’s hilarious, ambitious, and very smart. We’re proud of students like her who just keep going despite the discouragement they may face. Congratulations, Quinn, you deserve this!

What are your plans for the future?

Go to college. Double major in English and Biology.  Get a job as a copy editor in a book publishing house (if the book publishing world doesn’t implode like people keep telling me it’s going to), or if that doesn’t work out, get a job doing something biological (maybe botany).  Get married.  Raise a family.  Help someone become a better, stronger, happier person (and then keep doing it).

What do you do on rainy days?

Usually I go out and get wet; always, I mourn the fact that I don’t have bright yellow rubber galoshes to splash in puddles with.

What one food could you not live without?

How can you ask me to choose just one?  My top three contenders are bread, soup, and pesto–and I think that bread is the one that I really and truly could not live without.

If you could have dinner with 3 people (dead or alive), who would it be and why?

I’ll have “Authors of Classic Novels” for $500 and pick Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Emily Bronte.  Why?  They’ve all made me want to ask them that same question.  To Mr. Dostoyevsky, “Why are you so depressed?”; to Mr. Kafka, “Why do you have so many issues?”; and to Miss Bronte…  Well, just “WHY?!”

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

I want to fly and be able to fix spelling and grammar errors with a point of my finger.  You can call me Grammar Girl.

If you could change one thing in history, what would it be and why?

I would stop that Serbian anarchist from killing the Archduke Ferdinand.  Can you imagine what historical implications that would have?  If I could prevent WWI, it might prevent the Great Depression, WWII, all the miscellaneous conflicts in the Cold War…  That one event led to so many others.  Even if it wouldn’t stop the European alliances from getting themselves into a twist (they hadn’t fought a real war in a goodly long time, and back then Europeans seemed to get tetchy when they’d not had a war for too long), it would change the course of modern history down entirely unpredictable paths.

How are you more than a test score?

A test score cannot convey how well I write (25-minute essays say nothing about how well a person can actually write; they only say how well a person can write a 25-minute essay).  It cannot express that I’m a trained choral soprano, nor can it show that I cook delicious food, nor can it reveal that I have ninja skills (no, really), nor can it demonstrate my propensity for using macro focusing in my photography.

A single number, written in black ink on white paper, is not the measure of a student’s worth.  I am more than a test score because I am a living human being, with talents and interests ranging far beyond the factors standardized tests claim to be measuring.  My test scores do not tell me that I am smart, they tell me that I have inherited my father’s talent for taking multiple-choice tests.  Test scores are something I get.  The more important things to consider about me are the things that I give.

Meet Karyn Stanley, our most recent Matching winner who found and won a scholarship on Zinch. Because of this, we matched it and now she is one step closer to paying for college. With hopes of being a board-certified geophysicist, Karyn is a passionate learner who has a thirst for success. Let’s hear more about her with a few random questions.

What’s the first thing you would grab on your way out the door if your house caught fire?

My MacBook Pro. I love it!

What one food could you not live without?

Cheese. I love cheese on about anything. It’s just so good.

If you could have dinner with 3 people (dead or alive), who would it be and why?

Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and Homer Hickam. All three of these men are pioneers in their own right, and all are an inspiration to me.

If you had a million dollars and you had to spend it on yourself, what would you do?

I would keep about $200,000 for myself to pay my college tuition and then would use the remaining money to start a foundation. The world needs more budding Geologists and Geophysicists, especially from the Southeast U.S.

If you could change one thing in history, what would it be and why?

I don’t believe in changing history because everyday and every event is merely a stepping stone to the next. Every day is valuable.

How are you more than a test score?

I believe that all people have the ability to transcend the numbers that bind them to the status quo. Numbers can’t define my work ethic, my personality, or my ability to give.

If you’ve found and won a scholarship on Zinch, don’t hesitate to let us know! We love hearing form you, so be sure to shoot us an email over at winner[at]zinch.com.

Whether you are just starting high school, beginning your senior year or just graduated it’s time to start the college admissions process.  Many students find this process overwhelming because they don’t know where to start or they’re worried they won’t get into the school of their choice or they didn’t have any idea that the process could be this complicated.  But don’t worry.  This post will give you some basic tips to help get you through this process with as little stress as possible.

Tip #1 Don’t wait until your senior year to start planning for college.  Colleges look at your college resume for extra-curricular activities and other molding experiences.  By your senior year it’s oftentimes too late to add these types of experiences.  You’ll want to make sure that you add rigor to your schedule as well.  Many of the large universities are now requiring 2 years of another language.  They will soon start requiring calculus, pre-calculus, trigonometry, etc.  Taking AP or dual credit classes is also a good way to increase your chances of getting into the school of your choice.

Tip #2 Take your college admissions tests early to ensure you can get your very best test score.  Students typically find that they test better on one test than the other so it’s important that you take both the SAT and the ACT.  That way you can figure out what test you did better on and then you can take it again if you feel you need to improve your score.  It’s also a good idea to take them both in your junior year so that schools can start evaluating your profile early. If you are worried about doing well on these tests you should check out Grockit or Kaplan Test Prep to help you prepare.

Tip #3 Apply early.  By applying early it shows initiative.  It makes it so that you don’t have to worry about deadlines and also allows your profile to be reviewed and processed sooner.  When you are applying it’s a good idea to make sure you learn all of that school’s requirements and timelines so that you don’t miss anything.  Also, make sure that you send a resume and a personal statement with EVERY application.  Even if it’s not required.  Providing a document with your strengths only gives a school one more reason to say “yes” to your application. 

These three steps will give you the boost you need to get accepted to the college of your choice and prepare you to take the plunge into higher education.