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Homepage > News > Students Receive Academic Challenge Scholarships

As students arrive to college campuses across the state this fall, more than 25,000 Arkansans will have help paying for their education through the now lottery-funded Academic Challenge Scholarship. That's triple the number of students (8,282) who received the scholarship last year. Understandably, we in the House of Representatives have received many questions about how the scholarships are distributed, and exactly who's getting them.

Recipients have been notified, and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education (ADHE) is still finalizing the distribution process, but it has been able to provide preliminary numbers. According to ADHE, more than 54,000 people applied for the award. Close to 5,000 of the recipients are students who had been awarded the Academic Challenge Scholarship in previous years. Around $49 million in scholarships will go to 12,389 traditional students (those who are just graduating high school and entering college as a freshman). Since there is no funding cap for traditional students, every entering freshman who applied and met the criteria was awarded a scholarship. Also, the $41.5 million budgeted for current college students was enough to award every current student who applied and qualified. These students had to have earned at least 12 credit hours for each semester they were in college since high school. That totaled 4,550 scholarships. Non-traditional students will receive 3,600 of the awards. Unfortunately, that leaves many non-traditional students on a waiting list. The rules include a priority ranking system for non-traditional applicants. Their rank is weighted 70% on how close they are to attaining a degree (whether they already had some college hours), 20% on GPA, and 10% on whether they are in a high demand field of study. Though there will likely be some fine-tuning of the application process after this first year, the high number of applicants in each category only underscores the importance of the scholarship.

Jim Purcell, director of the state Department of Higher Education, said the department never expected to be able to fund every applicant. "The amount currently funded is relatively close to our budgeted numbers, although the number of students in the different categories is somewhat different than expected," Purcell said. "We are glad to respond to specific questions and inquiries from the scholarship applicants if they have concerns," he added. Students and parents with questions about criteria or award status can also visit www.adhe.edu for more information.

Also, in looking ahead to next year's awards, Arkansas high school students are encouraged to enroll in the Smart Core curriculum. Achieving a 2.5 GPA in Smart Core is one way to qualify for the Academic Challenge Scholarship. For students applying for the award for the Spring term, the deadline is November 1. As we strive to improve this program, we are committed to continuing to put these much-needed scholarships in the hands of as many Arkansans as possible, and we will keep working with the Department of Higher Education and others to make sure it's done in a way that is fair and efficient.