Recruitment Scholarships Will Enhance Bucknell

The following are some of the benefits, reasons, and a plan that will provide the university with immense opportunity.

Benefits

• Recruitment Scholarships attract extraordinary students, enhancing the university’s overall academic quality.

• As a recruitment tool, they will increase Bucknell’s ability to enroll top students who heretofore were attracted to other schools offering the recognition of recruitment scholarship.

• Recruitment scholarships increase Bucknell’s reputation by bringing acknowledgment to the university for its high caliber of student.

• Recruitment scholarships will attract more middle-income students and increase diversity.

• They also will draw top talent in the arts, maintain Bucknell’s ROTC program, and level the playing field in men’s and women’s basketball.

• Recruitment scholarships provide a margin of excellence that will benefit the university on all fronts.

Reasons

• One of the most significant developments in higher education is the use of recruitment scholarships by many of the nation’s premiere institutions to attract students with exceptional academic promise or unique talents.

• Of Bucknell’s 12 most closely monitored application-overlap schools, eight offer recruitment scholarships. Among the university’s offering recruitment scholarships are Johns Hopkins, Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Villanova, Wake Forest, Richmond, Northwestern, Stanford, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and Rice.

• Some of the top state universities are offering honor colleges as a way to attract the best possible students.

• At present, Bucknell is yielding only six percent of its top 500 students who have no demonstrated financial need. This increases to 25 percent to those eligible for need-based scholarships.

• Highly talented students are embracing the prestige of being recognized by a university as top performers in their respective fields of endeavor.

• Recruitment scholarships will sharpen our competitive edge.

The Plan

• The opportunity is ripe to develop a recruitment scholarship program that can lift the University to a higher level of strength, performance and reputation. We should be confident that we have the ability to do so without jeopardizing our traditional need-based program.

• To start, Bucknell wants to award 42 recruitment scholarship scholarships annually, representing about 5 percent of the accepted class. Ten of these awards will be given to no-need students, while the remaining 32 will be offered to students demonstrating financial need.

• Roughly three percent of the total financial aid budget will be appropriated to recruitment scholarship, and only one percent of the budget will be awarded to no-need students.

How You Can Help

• Establish an individually named recruitment scholarship

• Establish an endowed recruitment scholarship

• Contribute to the general fund for recruitment scholarship

• For information, contact the Office of Planned Giving at 570-577-3200 or email pg@bucknell.edu.