In most cases when someone accomplishes something they expect to be rewarded for their accomplishment. It’s natural for people to want to be rewarded for what they do, like when that child that brings home good grades he/she expects to be rewarded from their parents with a simple “good job” or “well done” and I think it appropriate that they are. Merit based scholarships are the reward for the students who have put hard work and determination towards their academic, athletic or artistic success. There is nothing wrong with rewarding someone for all of their hard work.
It’s important that we don’t forget the importance of encouragement. Since most of our childhoods we have been encouraged to do something, whether it was as simple as making up our bed or to bring home the honor roll report card. Encouragement is a part of the keys to success. There is nothing wrong with awarding the students who are able to achieve excellence throughout their school years. Merit based scholarships are encouraging to the students who have worked hard for it. These scholarships give students the security that they have not been working hard for nothing in return. People have always told us that hard work is rewarded and that’s the purpose that the merit based scholarships serves, to reward student’s hard work.
Some people feel as if merit based scholarships are a waste and the money and can be used for something better like financial aid. In some cases merit based scholarships can serve the same purpose as financial aid. Students aren’t always accepted for financial aid. For example for the fall semester of 2011 on of my close friends was denied financial aid multiple times because her mother worked as a nurse and “made too much money”, little did they know she wasn’t financially able to afford college even with her mom’s well-paying job. In the article Paying for College Zoe Mendelson states that “those worthy of the best are not the richest or the poorest but the brightest” (131). Students can be bright in different areas so merit based scholarships help them to get to where they want to be regardless of circumstances. Sure merit based scholarships could be abused by students who aren’t really dedicated but so can financial aid, like when the student get their money and drop out afterwards. Students who get merit based scholarships could have actually needed the scholarship just like anyone else. Those students could have worked hard in their area of excellence for all of those years because they knew that the merit scholarship was their ticket out.
Merit based scholarships is another way to help people to further their education, it’s like motivation. No merit based scholarships aren’t a just a hand out. As stated in the article Merit-based Scholarships for Incoming Students the scholarships in most cases are “based on continued academic excellence as evidence by maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher” (138). All students are not interested in attending to school to become a lawyer or a doctor, so with a merit scholarship you can do more. Merit based scholarships allow students to go to school based on their athletic, artistic and/or academic skills. If more students are able to go to school then that decrease the number of students out in the world doing nothing with their lives. Merit based scholarships motivates students want to continue their education because it allows them to go to school to do something that they love. When a student can go to college to pursue their dreams it makes them more determined to do better for themselves.
Merit Scholarships they aren’t all bad. There are lots of positive things about this scholarship and lots of negatives. Truth is there is a bad side to everything. There is an opposing argument to everything. Merit based scholarships are rewards. They are rewards that are rewarded to student to work hard for it. I am a strong believe that hard work deserves reward. Merit based scholarships are encouraging, sometimes much needed, and they can help to motivated other to further their education. All in all merit scholarships are good if used the right way.
