Calling all duck-callers and druids: Quirky attributes yield college cash
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Duke, a 19-year-old veteran of more than a dozen duck-calling contests, wowed the judges with his renditions of the four required blasts: hail, feed, comeback and mating. Duke, from nearby Brinkley, triumphed — and bagged one of the nation's more unusual college scholarships.
"I knew I had a shot at it," he said of the $1,500 award, which he hopes to use to attend the University of Arkansas. "And I think it's pretty great you can get a scholarship for calling ducks."
Others might, too.
With the cost of a college education rising relentlessly, students are scrambling for scholarships. Some win awards based on financial need or exceptional smarts. Some are gifted athletes. Others receive help from foundations, companies or service clubs.
But some, like Duke, are able to snag scholarships because of less conventional talents, interests or physical attributes.
For certain scholarships, it might be helpful to be tall or left-handed, short or heavy. Or to be skilled at designing and crafting stylish garments made of wool — or duct tape. Or to be deeply interested in the study of water bugs or winemaking, funerals or fungi.
Each issue, each interest, it seems, has awards.
There are scholarships for welders, fly fishers and pie makers, for golf caddies and skateboarders. There is one for pagans and another for parapsychologists. There is even one sponsored by fans of Klingons, the fictional bumpy-headed aliens of "Star Trek" fame.
One endowment fund is for needy music students who can sing or play the national anthem "with sincerity." Another seeks clean-living young people who do "not participate in strenuous athletic contests."
"Some of these [scholarships] are so specific, it's like you're going to find one that says the kid has to have one brown eye and one blue eye," said Delisa Falks, associate director of financial aid at Texas A&M University.
Such offbeat scholarships, privately funded and often from bequests, tend to be small, bringing a recipient anywhere from $500 to a few thousand dollars.
Some high-school counselors say the awards are hardly worth the typical application of essays and recommendations, and encourage students to focus instead on more traditional grants.
But others say a few thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at, especially for what, in some cases, may amount to an hour or two of effort.
Even the quirkiest scholarships "help reduce a student's loan indebtedness and are a great way for them to be recognized for their talents and abilities," said David Levy, director of financial aid at the California Institute of Technology.
Tiffany Chioma Anaebere, for example, was online one night while she was a senior at King-Drew Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles. She happened upon a scholarship for tall kids. The minimum for female applicants was 5-foot-10 and, for males, 6-0. Anaebere is 5-11.
She contacted the California Tip Toppers Club ("World's Highest Society"), filled out the application — including a short essay on being tall — and fired it off. She won, earning $1,000 to help pay her way at Stanford University.
Duck fest doles money
In Stuttgart, billed as the "Rice and Duck Capital of the World," Pat Peacock helps organize the annual duck fest and the contest named after her stepfather and mother, Chick and Sophie Major. The 30-year-old scholarship, Peacock says, is for duck-calling high-school seniors with higher-education plans, whether university or barber college.
Duke, the 2003 winner, wants to study agricultural business. First, he hopes to do a little duck-hunting.
Other scholarships are sponsored by organizations that are themselves a bit offbeat.
The Free Spirit Alliance, one of the nation's larger pagan groups, is sponsoring two $500 scholarships this year and raising the funds atypically, too, with a tattoo-design contest. Applicants need not be pagan, organizers say, but spiritual open-mindedness wouldn't hurt.
The alliance, whose members includes witches, druids and shamans, is earnest about its scholarships. "The quest for knowledge is very important," said Glen Marshall, a computer-security specialist who is its treasurer.
In a similar vein, the Klingon Language Institute, founded in 1992 by fans of "Star Trek" and its warrior Klingon aliens, offers a $500 scholarship.
The award, for an undergrad or graduate student in language or linguistics, is a nod to the institute's mission to go where few have gone before, exploring and promoting the extensive language created for use in several "Star Trek" films.
Funding comes from sales of the group's translation of "Hamlet," iambic pentameter reportedly intact, into what members like to call "the original Klingon." The reference is to a sly joke in one film about how Shakespeare is best enjoyed in his native tongue.
Institute director Lawrence Schoen said the scholarship, which last year had no recipient and few applicants, may suffer a bit from what he delicately termed the "spitting and barking" issue, the funny noises would-be Klingons use to speak correctly.
Nonetheless, "we take the work with the language very seriously," said Schoen, a research psychologist and former college professor. He cited the institute's motto: "Language opens worlds." Or, in the (original) Klingon: "qo'mey poSmoH Hol."
Certain legitimate scholarships have evolved over time.
At Pennsylvania's Bucknell University, officials say the Gertrude J. Deppen scholarship was established in 1967 by Joseph H. Deppen in memory of his sister. The fund, Deppen specified, is for needy students who do not drink, smoke or use drugs and who come from one particular high school in Pennsylvania's coal country.
Because that school, Mount Carmel, is a football powerhouse, Deppen also required that applicants should not take part in "strenuous athletic contests," said Linda Reinaker, Bucknell's manager of endowed gifts.
"The way we interpret that now is that they just don't participate in varsity sports," Reinaker said. "Intramural teams are OK."
As for the clean-living aspect, Reinaker said she does not make spot-checks at recipients' dorm rooms, but students are warned to avoid public infractions.
What's in a name?
For some of the most lucrative scholarships, the main requirement — and the one that's hardest to meet — is the right name.
In 1978, a young woman named Susan Hawley was a freshman at Texas A&M. She fell in love with a cotton farmer named Joe Scarpinato Jr., married him and dropped out after one year. From time to time, she thought about going back to school but knew her growing family never could afford it.
Eighteen years later, a letter arrived at her home in Hearne, Texas. "This man had left over half a million [dollars] to A&M, and he wanted people with his name to go to college," she said. "They were trying to get in touch with everyone who had that name."
Her name, it turned out.
The endowment established by Lee Scarpinato, an A&M alum, is for any qualified undergrad, graduate or professional-school student with his last name, by birth or marriage. It covers all tuition and fees, along with an allotment for room and board, an amount now worth about $12,000 annually, said Falks, the fund's coordinator.
After winning the scholarship, Susan Scarpinato went back to school, earning a bachelor's degree in agricultural development in 2002. She will complete her master's degree next year.
Her son Joey, 18, now has been accepted at A&M and also will benefit. "It's just a godsend," said Joey, who will start at the university this fall.
But his mother, sounding apologetic, admits to a quibble with the rules: What if her daughter, say, were to marry, take her husband's name and then wanted to go to A&M? And what about their children? None would be eligible for the scholarship without that magic name.
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