SMU is proud to showcase its Presidential Scholars and the Presidential Scholar system, and rightly so. Taken as a whole, these students are intelligent, enthusiastic, open-minded and genuine in their search for knowledge wherever they can find it. I am blessed to count many of these scholars as my closest friends.
Yet problems remain. “My main problem with the PS program is the interview system,” says one scholar. “While no interview system can be foolproof, I feel that some interviewers are either inadequately trained or completely unaware of the importance of their assessments of the candidates. Some interviewers grade the interviewees far too lightly, which consequently obscures the differences between the truly deserving and those less worthy. Having spent a good deal of time with a number of examples of such ignorant beneficence, I feel that something within the process must be changed lest the program lose its legitimacy.”
This would be a tragedy. The Presidential Scholar system is of great benefit to various stakeholders in the university: students, sponsors and the university itself. Every student knows of the full scholarship that is given to each scholar, yet other benefits accrue to each scholar as well. “There are perks like being more likely to go to Tate Lectures, the trip to Taos over Labor day… There’s a lot of networking that’s available. Martha Starke, who is like the PS ‘Mom,’ is in touch with just about everyone everywhere, and we get opportunities for jobs from faculty members [and] information on fellowships.”
The university markets Presidential Scholars aggressively to promote the image of a school personally involved in the future of its brightest students. Those students, after all, go on to represent the university in their respective futures, building value second-hand for the school in terms of reputation, ties and networking, and monetary value. Sponsors are comforted with the knowledge that they are securing a brighter future for a student and giving them opportunities they would not have as a normal student at the university.
Yet herein lies the current problem: Too many Presidential Scholars are just “normal” students, in a relative sense, of course. Since those in charge of choosing future scholars are allowed to be so selective and employ such an exhaustive process of applications and multiple interviews, it would stand to reason that every student who emerges successful from the process should be of outstanding academic caliber, possess the most upstanding character and be endowed with the highest quality personal traits.
Yet I have heard multiple stories of a few scholars drinking to extreme excess, habitually using drugs, being indolent, lazy, boorish, arrogant and generally unconcerned about academic affairs. Bear in mind, this is an extremely small percentage, no more than two or three in each class, but as I mentioned previously, with the exhaustive process that is used to screen the applicants, this is statistically too many.
This is not all that is imbalanced in this equation. With so few scholarships to award, it is a shame that some are given to inappropriate candidates. There are two ways to resolve this, and because the program is of such critical importance, both must be undertaken. The President’s Scholars’ Office can and should be much more thorough in its screening process as well as expand the program significantly to capture more equally worthy students. For example, the program should give substantial thought to expanding the selection criteria to make it less subjective and narrow. Relying on only a few objective criteria, such as GPA or SAT scores, and subjective “feelings” about a certain candidate’s application may be easy and simple, but it does a disfavor to those whose qualifications are broader and not easily captured by the current criteria.
Only by combining these two approaches will there be significant progress toward resolving the current issues. Yet there are encouraging signs of willingness to reform. One current scholar stated, “The President’s Scholars’ Office has been very receptive to changes suggested by the scholars, and hopefully these new changes will work well with the next interview. There have always been questions about the selection system, particularly when there are [very qualified] people who aren’t scholars, but then again no system is perfect. Currently the system itself is going to stay the same, but there will be more input from the current scholars themselves.”
For the sake of fairness to future candidates, it must be reformed. For the sake of sponsors and their money, it must be reformed. For the sake of the university and its reputation, now and in the future, it must be reformed.
John Jose is a sophomore finance and economics major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
