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Cheyanne Brown
English 112-13
Professor Grodzinski
April 14, 2015

Scholarship Opportunities

Lebanon Valley College is a Division three, private Liberal Arts institution. The school
receives large amounts of money every year. They obtain their money through things such as,
donations, fundraisers, alumni, and other sources. However, LVC only accumulates a certain
amount of scholarship opportunities that help their students financially. Being a division three
school there are not opportunities for students to obtain athletic scholarships, which in turn
makes it more difficult for some student athletes to be financially supported. I believe that there
should be more scholarship help for students who want and/or are required to study abroad and
that in order to bring not only inclusive excellence and a larger student population into the
community.
The introduction of new scholarships into the study abroad program would greatly benefit
not only the school itself, but also its students. Giving students the opportunity to study abroad
opens doors for them to succeed and excel throughout their college careers and onto their
professional lives. Statistics show that ninety-percent of study abroad students found
employment easier within 12 months of graduating. In comparison only 49% of non-study

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abroad graduates found employment within the same period (What). This study shows that
students can become more knowledgeable of their surroundings and have a more realistic idea of
how other people live, what education is like in different countries, and how life differs from
their own social norms. With these tools, the students can use what they learn to better
themselves in a school setting. At the same time, they can learn how to adapt to the different
kinds of adversity they face by being in a different culture.
Another study from University System of Georgia, shows there is a 100 percent greater
improvement in GPA when students study abroad. The study showed students that have studied
abroad have had their GPAs rise twice as fast than students who did not study abroad (What).
Looking at this information, it is known that when students take imitative to step out of their
comfort zones and take on new experiences it results in students being able to excel and strive in
more difficult situations. Studies found that seventy-percent of study abroad alumni claimed that
because they chose to study abroad they were more satisfied with their careers and jobs. Also,
fifty-nine-percent of employers said that studying abroad would be deemed valuable in any
career later on in their life. Looking through different statistics and studies shows that majority of
people who study abroad have more knowledge and have a better chance of finding a career or
job that they find interesting, from their experiences throughout their education in another
country. It helps improve work ethic and grades significantly.
Opening up new scholarship opportunities for study abroad students at Lebanon Valley
College will help studies who are in financial troubles and need to study abroad for their desired
major, especially. For example, if a student is a global studies major, it is a requirement that its
students take a semester to study in a different country.

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A huge aspect that Lebanon Valley College tries to enforce inclusive excellence
throughout its campus. The college wants to bring in more diversity and more culture into the
schools community. But in order to accomplish this, the school needs to incorporate different
kinds of scholarships into their pool of opportunities. There are not many scholarships that can
actually be distributed among different people.
For example, at this institution there are scholarships for people who are either in the top
ten, twenty, or thirty percent of their class get what is called Presidential Scholarships. There
are also many other scholarships such as, the Multicultural fellowship and that speaks for
itself. Then there are scholarships based off of certain majors, such as biology, English, physics,
music, alumni, departmental, and also need based if you went to a certain school (Financial).
Although, these are a great number of scholarships, there can be more. It is possible that with all
of the money that comes into this campus, that they can develop new scholarship opportunities.
If this school is so big on making its campus and environment more diverse and culture
filled then it needs to focus on how to do that. Looking at how to make this campus more
inclusive is first and foremost, getting that culture into the school. Develop new opportunities for
incoming students, give them the motivation to want to apply. Students who are looking to apply
to schools are mainly looking for scholarships, because schools now are expensive and want as
much financial help as they can find.
In order for this campus to have inclusive excellence there needs to be more financial
help for students of different backgrounds, from all around. To make LVC a more involved and
open campus people have to adapt and learn to different people, it needs to teach what the real
world will actually be like. For this campus and community to become more known and enticing
it needs to be spiced up. Opening up the scholarship pool will make more people want to attend

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this college and to apply. Inclusive excellence has become an important part of this campus over
the past few years or so, but why only give the education of the topic on one day? It is about
being open and understanding of what different cultures have to offer. Allowing more
scholarships to more diverse groups will greatly benefit LVCs campus and its communities. It
will allow students to get a fair education and be confident that even with their backgrounds they
can go to college, be financially capable, and feel confident about taking their education to the
next level.
However, people will claim that opening up to more scholarships can make certain
people feel like they do not have the same chances as someone else or even that they can get lazy
and slack on their work. For example, some people would argue that having a scholarship for
people of color is unfair. They would bring up the fact that this initiative take away from people
that might be more qualified that are getting left out. This situation has come up in discussions
here at Lebanon Valley College. People find that the scholarship offered for multicultural
students is unfair to the people that identify as white. The main factor to consider for this
situation is that the multicultural fellowship is only one scholarship solely for minorities. It is one
scholarship designated for minorities along with multiple scholarships offered for everyone else
in which the majority has a bigger chance of getting due to their absolute number. The
percentage of white versus minorities is an eighty and twenty percent split. This means that there
is an eighty percent chance that the person that obtains the other scholarships will be white.
When attending Lebanon Valley College, which is a small, private, Liberal Arts college,
one has to realize that opportunities for financial aid and scholarships will not always come easy
to most students. It is the colleges job to open up to new advances into scholarship opportunities
for its students. It will capture more peoples attention and desire to want to attend this

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establishment. I believe strongly that there should be more scholarship opportunities for study
abroad programs and that there should be more open opportunities for the campus to expand and
to become a more inclusive campus and at the same time become a larger school in the process.

REFERENCES

"What Statistics Show about Study Abroad Students." What Statistics Show about Study Abroad
Students. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
"Financial Aid - Scholarships." LVC RSS News. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.