The Scholar!

There's a new show on one of the networks called "The Scholar." The idea is that the winner of this "Survivor" type show is granted a full-ride scholarship to the college of their choice. The losers of the show go home empty-handed, destitute, disgraced, and otherwise back to the obscurity of their humdrum lives. If only that was the case...

I watched about 20 minutes of one episode, and they show about 15 teenagers, seniors in high school, who all could (and probably will) get full-ride scholarships to any school they want. For instance, there is one girl who scored a 1550 on the SAT. That score alone is enough to make her a national merit scholarship finalist. Another girl has a 4.0 GPA and is a math prodigy. A girl going into the mathematics/analytical/engineering world has her way paved in gold laid out before her. No sexism intended here, but traditionally brainiac professions have a dearth of estrogen.

The network advertised this series as "The nation's most deserving high school students are going to compete for one full-ride scholarship to the college of their choice." Yeah, it sounds great until you realize, like I've said in the previous paragraphs, that these kids are going to go places with or without the scholarship. No, this series is just about getting 15 minutes of fame.

If the network wants to really make a difference that would be fun to watch, they should rework the show to be, "The nation's biggest underachievers will compete for one full-ride scholarship." Watching brilliant people be brilliant is not that fun (unless you have a string of 75 consecutive Jeopardy wins). But, watching mediocre people be brilliant could be fun to watch. Reality contests should be geared so that the contest gets out of people some things that those people didn't know they had within them.

I don't know if my idea would in fact be good television, but it would at least take the superficiality out of the contest. God bless those kids that are competing for the school of their choice, but is anyone's life really going to change based on this contest. No, probably not. Besides, you might think that whoever wins will probably want to go to Hawvawd or Yale, but in my experience, there is a lot more to choosing a school than what the name on the gate says. The school of my choosing was Abilene Christian University, despite being turned down for the Presidential scholarship, and despite having an offer of a large scholarship at a somewhat prestigious school. You have to look for a good fit wherever you are.