Tanya Marsh

With the recent tuition increase, many students may be wondering how to acquire more money to cover the higher costs. While scholarships and financial aid are out there, it can be hard to discover exactly what the criteria are for doling out the dough.

Arts and Science and Agriculture and Biological Sciences are two colleges at SDSU are somewhat notorious for their selectivity in giving out scholarships. For Arts and Science, it’s the number of scholarships available. For Ag and Bio, it’s the standards that students must meet to qualify for the money that creates confusion.

Chuck McMullen, the associate dean of academic programs for the Ag-Bio college, said his college gives out quite a bit of money. This year, Ag-Bio shelled out $144,075 to 145 on-campus students and $37,640 to 55 incoming freshmen.

That’s 200 students that received scholarships out of a total headcount for the college of somewhere around 1,420.

In Arts and Sciences, there are only 12 scholarships available in the actual college; although there are many more in each individual department.

For both colleges, the criteria for these monies is what makes getting scholarships difficult.

“[The requirements] are as varied as the scholarships we have,” McMullen said. “These are gifts from alumni and friends of the college.

According to Jerry Jorgensen, dean of Arts and Science, the scholarship applications go to a committee who decides who gets what based on factors such as GPA, activities and career goals.

“The [applications] we don’t award, we send them on to the [students’] departments,” Jorgensen said.

For both colleges, some of the scholarships are reserved for certain majors. Some of them are reserved for students in certain class ranks. Some are renewable, most aren’t. Some have to be approved by the association that sponsors the scholarship. Sometimes, preference is given to students from certain counties.

“Almost all [of the scholarships] have some reference to high acade-

See CRITERIA, page 2