Beginning with the fall 2011 semester, the National Hispanic Scholarship package will no longer be offered to incoming UA freshmen and other students who do not already have the scholarship.
However, students who currently hold National Hispanic Scholarships will not be affected, said Cathy Andreen, director of media relations.
Andreen said the scholarship was eliminated because the National Merit and National Achievement Scholarships are awarded by the National Merit Corporation and the criteria are more rigorous than what the College Board uses for the National Hispanic Scholar recognition.
“Since the [PSAT] is a requirement for the National Merit Competition as well as for the National Hispanic Scholars, the decision was made that students must qualify for the National Merit Competition and be named finalists to receive the scholarship package,” she said.
In order to qualify for the 2011 National Merit Scholarship, students must have scored at least a 210 on their PSAT in October 2009, their junior year of high school.
The score is determined by totaling three sections on the PSAT, the critical reading section, the math section and the writing scores section. A student can score a maximum of 80 points on each of the three sections, and a perfect score would be a 240.
Andrew Martinez, a junior majoring in telecommunication and film, said he felt the University was doing the right thing by doing away with the scholarship.
“I feel like they’re encouraging competition,” Martinez said. “If the National Hispanic Scholarship Board wasn’t holding its recipients to the highest standards, it’s not fair to those students receiving other scholarships. These tighter standards will push all students to work harder in high school and college to receive scholarships and other types of financial aid.”
Kirk Bonacci, a junior, said he was pleased to learn that the University was not going to take the scholarship away from students who currently hold it.
“I would have been pretty upset if I was a recipient of the National Hispanic Scholarship and then poof, they took it away from me,” he said. “But they are not doing that. They’re just not offering it to incoming students. That seems fair to me. Hopefully there will be some other form of scholarship offered to Hispanic students coming into the University. Diversity here at UA will help it grow.”
The Department of Undergraduate Scholarships said that, as far as they have been told, the National Achievement Scholarship will still be offered to incoming students in the fall semester.
According to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, 107 entering students earned the National Merit Scholarship in 2009, the most recent year recorded in the University’s online Factbook. A total of 26 entering students earned the National Achievement Scholarship, while 22 students entered the University having earned the National Hispanic Scholarship, the Factbook also states.
