New: www.vandorenscholars.org
April 2, 2008 • (0) Comments
The Van Doren Scholarships are among New Jersey’s most prestigious academic recognitions, providing college tuition scholarships for Somerset County students who display a powerful thirst for learning.
And each year, more than a hundred worthy students apply for the merit awards, filing lengthy application forms, scholastic transcripts, and recommendation letters in a blizzard of paperwork over several weeks in March. The result of this scramble would be purely chaotic if Van Doren Trustee Allen Crossett weren’t always on top of his game. Despite his sincere efforts, every year a few incredibly talented applicants with All-Universe academic credentials, wise and compassionate hearts, and more friends in high places than kids deserve, fail to follow the directions and earn rude disqualifications. Que lastima!
They quickly learn that there are no mulligans in this business. The jovial Dr. Crossett is a most capable bearer of bad news.
Why do applicants goof up? For one thing, many count on hand-holding by their school guidance counselors, as slippery a group of human gatekeepers as exists anywhere on this planet. Others are betrayed when the highly-influential-but-perceptive grown-ups they tapped post fawning and formulaic reference letters a day too late. And sometimes, kids aren’t sure about a rule but fail to ask, assuming that ambiguity is simply an authoritarian way of saying “no harm, no foul”.
Aggrieved parents howl so much about this state of affairs that the foundation resolved in 2007 to make its application procedure as clear and accessible as possibly can be. And in this century, that means taking it to the web.
The result is http://www.vandorenscholars.org, a one-stop place to find answers to frequently asked questions, download current application forms, and keep abreast of important deadlines. Technically, the site was an easy build atop ExpressionEngine and the YUI CSS framework, and features some nifty JavaScript and DOM trickeration that delivers, dare I say it?, the ever-popular “Web 2.0” experience. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: No actual students were abused during the construction of this website. All those photographs of happy, smiling collegiate-types are licensed stock imagery.