How can a Hope Scholarship Help You?

Students within Georgia have the opportunity to apply for and receive the Hope Scholarship. In 1993, Zell Miller, a former governor in the state of Georgia, founded the HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) program. Each year, students who have shown consistency in excellence, shown through their exception grades and characteristics are awarded the HOPE scholarship.

 

Because the HOPE Scholarship is an educational program specific to Georgia, only students enrolled in the educational system of Georgia are eligible to receive this scholarship. What is more, the only educational institutions that accept this scholarship are those operating within Georgia State, which includes technical colleges, colleges, as well as private and public universities. The Georgia Lottery for Education completely funds the scholarship and gives hope to the millions of students within the school system.

 

The scholarship program works in many ways, with several different requirements, depending on which type of diploma you have received and what type of college you will be attending. If a public technical college is something that is right up your alley, you may be eligible to receive the Hope scholarship. There are some requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the scholarship; one very important requirement is that you must be a legal resident within the state of Georgia. Furthermore, the student, in order to be eligible for the Hope scholarship must have graduated from an eligible high school in Georgia, no earlier than the year 1993.

 

While in high school, you must have maintained at least a grade average of a B or a cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 or 3.2, depending on the type of diploma you receive.

 

Since its conception in 1993, the Hope scholarship has been awarded to approximately nine hundred thousand Georgia students, totaling awards of almost three billion dollars. Of these awards, four hundred thousand scholarships were awarded to students attending public colleges and universities for a total of nearly two billion dollars. One hundred thousand students receiving the Hope scholarship have attended private colleges and universities for a total of four hundred million. Lastly, five hundred thousand students have attended public technical colleges with the scholarship at the tune of nearly seven hundred million dollars.

 

The Hope scholarship is not only a sign of “hope” for students who need help gaining access to college, but has also been a supporting factor in many other scholarships created within the United States. The perfect example of this is the America’s Hope scholarship program created by Former President Bill Clinton. This program, a tax credit for two years of college, was modeled after Georgia’s Hope Scholarship.

 

Georgians feel a direct responsibility for molding and looking to the future. The future is seen in every student. Therefore, they make it their responsibility to see to it that every student that has worked hard and wishes to go to college should be able to do just that.