One day, I was thinking about my future. Since, this is my final year of high school, I have to do all sorts of lovely things like apply to universities, apply for scholarships, and keep a 90 average while being bombarded with teachers bent on “preparingApparently, having an insane evaluation scheme, like in Calculus (MCB 4U1) at West Hill, is a part of that.” us for university. I’ve got the universities application part down and that 90 average thing isn’t looking too hot right now, but it’s time for me to have a look at the wide world of scholarships.

Scholarships are a funny thing. They all want the same thing. It doesn’t matter if they restrict their requirements to include only Vietnamese people or they have a scholarship just for environmental engineers, all scholarships want two things:

• academic achievement
• community involvement

Usually, high community involvement and leadership kind of implies the person is a good student. That is, those people who are the president of fourteen clubs at their school and another handful outside of school. What I don’t understand is why every single scholarship on the planet wants these leadership qualities. Do they think about what they’re asking on these things?

These people are giving the bulk of the award money to those who they think are going to be the Leaders of Tomorrow. And what kind of jobs will the Leaders of Tomorrow have? We’d assume they’re going to be at the helm of corporations and leading nations. They’re not going to be doing menial labour like designing bridges, folding proteins, or programming away at kernels.

Basically, all the scholarship money is going to all the artsies and the prestegious business program people — the ones who walk around campus in suits and have armed guardtowers around Schulich their school.

Meanwhile, those of us with sharp minds going into engineering, math, or science — programs for the peasantry — don’t really stand a chance against those people who’ve built up five years of volunteering experience in three short years. The worst part is that tuition for these programs costs more than those artsie programs.

One day, if I become rich, I will set up a scholarship based on technical aptitude. I’ll take the guy who can build a cold fusion reactor over the one who volunteers in Uruguay over the summer. I don’t care if you stopped bullying at your school while you were SAC president. Sorry, but the guy who maintains a kernel patchset is going to get the money.