AWARD ELIGIBILITY
In our recent search for various scholarships and awards, we came across the "John Gyles Education Awards, presented by the "John Gyles Education Center". The award, which can be as much as $3,000, seemed quite attractive, given its simple requirements:
- Full-time university or college student
- Citizenship of United States or Canada
- Minimum GPA of 2.7 (equivalent of B-)
APPLICATION
There are 10.6 million full-time college & university students in the United States and another 750,000 in Canada, so you can imagine how many people are eligible for the award. There are no essays to write, but you do have to provide some information about yourself, including the following:
- Summary of academic status (GPA, extracurricular, etc)
- Copy of academic record
- 3 references
- Description of career plans & personal ambitions
- Outline of financial circumstances
- Application form (1 page)
- Submit by June 1
- OPTIONAL: Include $8 to receive notice of success or failure
RECIPIENTS
Given the wide appeal of this award program, I expected to be able to find additional information about it on the internet. To my surprise, there was nothing available on any sites except for a cut-and-paste of the short description from the official website. Every university and financial aid office had copied the information, but there was hardly a mention of someone actually RECEIVING the awards. It seemed to me that this could be a low-level scam, offering a potential reward in exchange for a nominal fee.
On a Yahoo answer page, I found a discussion of the award, where someone asked the same question that was in my mind: has anyone received this award? One person came back and said that a friend of theirs had received it, but that was it. I could not find any more information about how many awards had been given in the past, or who had received them.
So I contacted the award administrator in New Brunswick, Mr. R James Cougle (who is listed in the Yellow Pages for Fredericton, NB, as a "fundraising consultant"). He said that the recipient list is not published on the internet, but he promised to mail me a copy. In the last six years, 114 awards were given out (19 per year). The list he gave me contained the name and school for each recipient, but not the amount of the award. I found a blog belonging to one guy on the list, where he explained how he applied for 50+ scholarships four years ago as a high school senior and was awarded over $24,000. Looks like he's still going strong, adding the John Gyles scholarship to his list of successes.
There you have it. There really ARE people out there who have received this award.
[Author's Note (April 7, 2008): The individual referred to in the previous paragraph is named Raphael Kang, and he has left a comment here stating that he was NOT a recipient of the award, contrary to the information provided to me by Mr. Cougle.]
WHO IS JOHN GYLES?
In my internet searches for the term "John Gyles", I kept coming across references to a resident of New England who had been captured by the Maliseet Indians in the late 1600s. I disregarded these results, because I didn't think it likely that this man would have established a university award program upon his release from captivity in 1698. I asked Mr. Cougle about the name of the program. He said that it was in fact named after this 17th-Century John Gyles (1678?-1755), and he directed me to a book about Gyles' life, entitled The Ordeal of John Gyles: Being an Account of his Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, etc. as a Slave of the Maliseets -- by Stuart Trueman.What a fantastic book. I finished reading it this morning.
Trueman's work is a slightly dramatized expansion of Gyles' own personal account of how he (at the age of nine) was carried off as a prisoner during an Indian attack on his family, and lived with them until he was sold to a French magistrate at the age of 15, freed finally when he was 18 years old. He endured frequent beatings by raging squaws, extreme conditions of weather, and general disregard during his time, but emerged with a good attitude and many useful skills (including the unique ability to speak English, French, Maliseet and Micmac). Most of this took place in the area that is now New Brunswick.
AWARD BENEFACTOR
Despite the great quality of the book, I still wondered why this award (which was founded in 1990) was named after a man who lived 300 years ago. I learned from Mr. Cougle that the original benefactor was one Allie Forbes, who is reputedly related to John Gyles. I still have no idea who Allie Forbes was (or is), but I think I have provided considerably more information here than was previously available on the internet. You can judge for yourselves if you think it is a scam, but I certainly didn't enclose the $8 when I applied.
More posts about cute babies tomorrow...
