Financial Aid

Daniel Headlee

Dr. LaLonde

November 12, 2009

My question for Ms. Gill is, “Is there more full athletic scholarships given out than full academic scholarships?” And, “What qualities are most attractive when considering what person gets a certain amount of financial aid?”

After being at Belmont for a year and almost a semester I’ve experience a broad array of fellow students. A lot of the students who come to Belmont come because they want to get a job in the music industry in some way and most of them bust their butt to get here. I understand that it doesn’t make sense for the university pay for students to come here if the student is willing to take on the financial burden himself or herself but Belmont advertises itself as a Christian affiliated school that cares about the individual. If that is what matters to Belmont then I would disagree with an athletic scholarship being given out more often than an academic. On average the students who receive an academic scholarships are going to be students who excelled in high school and want to come to college to develop skills that help them down the road.

In the Belmont mission statement it says, “Belmont University empowers men and women to engage and transform the world. The university prepares students to use their intellectual skills, creativity, and faith to meet the challenges and opportunities that face the human community.” I believe our school does this but I think Belmont is diverging from this mission when they invest high dollars in things such as athletics before things such as speech and debate students (I.E. “students with intellectual skills and creativity”). I’m not saying that the athletes don’t have these skills it’s just that in their sport theses skills aren’t being developed as efficiently as they could be if they were in speech and debate or SIFE.