University of Colorado officials say this year’s new scholarship initiative is luring the nation’s highly recruited top high school grads at twice the rate of previous years.

Admissions counselors at the university say the new presidential scholarship is giving CU an edge as colleges nationwide compete for the highest-scoring grads in the country.

University President Hank Brown said he hopes the program will grow and that regents next month vote to double the number of presidential scholarships available to out-of-state students.

The scholarship targets National Merit Scholarship finalists, high school student-body presidents near the top of the class and students recognized for academic achievement, athletics and the arts.

Before the scholarship was created, about 14 percent of top students from other states offered admission to CU accepted. This year, with the program in place that number more than doubled to 29 percent.

The scholarships cut tuition for out-of-state students from $22,000 a year to less than $12,000.

The push for top students from across the country will help the school attract the best in-state scholars too, said Michael Grant, associate vice chancellor for undergraduate education. Adding top out-of-state students can encourage in-state scholars to take a second look at their local university system, instead of dismissing Colorado’s schools in favor of the Ivy League, he said.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 12:32 am and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: College, Education News, Grant, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.