I've had a front row chair interviewing candidates for young eagle scholarships. The whiz kids are getting chosen due to high grade point averages in high school. Some of the kids I think would be better pilots, because they can't hang with the geniuses, lose due to poor grades. I'm curious how many pilots were high achievers in school.

I was average gpa, good at math, science, and shop. Bad at English, typing, foreign language.

I don't remember any problems getting my private. My instrument rating was hard, I really had to get serious to finish.

Im admittedly a horrible sit down in class student. Put some tools in my hands and show me something you want done and Im good to go. My GPA was always average and possibly low, and I quit college early to go to work.

Sometimes I think I wish I could've done some things differently. But then again I really don't. Im pretty damn happy with the way things have turned out thus far. But I worked for all of it.

If someone would've given me a scholarship I probably would've blown it. But then again, no one would've given me one because of my GPA!

Nosedragger,

The kids with the high GPA are not the wiz kids, for the most part. They work consistently and have parents who push. Wiz kids are generally lazy and the curriculum is so weak that they have little interest. My wife was valedictorian at Evergreen and made straight As while finishing college in three years with dual majors, biology and Spanish. She was a wiz kid in a work ethic generation. Our three sons got Bs and Cs.

I was the average student.

If we put in the same concern and time, there would be as many pilots as drivers. I didn't have a car until I was married. I put my time and money into airplanes. Anything is easy if we start young. Any of those kids could solo in less than ten hours.

Contact

contactflying wrote:Nosedragger,

The kids with the high GPA are not the wiz kids, for the most part. They work consistently and have parents who push. Wiz kids are generally lazy and the curriculum is so weak that they have little interest. My wife was valedictorian at Evergreen and made straight As while finishing college in three years with dual majors, biology and Spanish. She was a wiz kid in a work ethic generation. Our three sons got Bs and Cs.

I was the average student.

If we put in the same concern and time, there would be as many pilots as drivers. I didn't have a car until I was married. I put my time and money into airplanes. Anything is easy if we start young. Any of those kids could solo in less than ten hours.

Contact

I have to respectfully disagree. There is some kids that work hard, but a lot are just born with smarts. My brother is very book smart. Took calculus for something to do. But give him tools and something to fix and he's not gonna get it without a manual. I'm the polar opposite. Book stupid, bad grades, never graduated. But give me tools and I'll tear most anything apart and fix it. Same goes for flying and running equipment. It takes him way longer to get onto it and I can just jump into anything and it doesn't take long. Not saying everyone is like this, but I think lots of people are gifted one way or another. Of course there's another ways those people that are just great at everything naturally. I'm far from one of those.

A1Skinner wrote:

contactflying wrote:Nosedragger,

The kids with the high GPA are not the wiz kids, for the most part. They work consistently and have parents who push. Wiz kids are generally lazy and the curriculum is so weak that they have little interest. My wife was valedictorian at Evergreen and made straight As while finishing college in three years with dual majors, biology and Spanish. She was a wiz kid in a work ethic generation. Our three sons got Bs and Cs.

I was the average student.

If we put in the same concern and time, there would be as many pilots as drivers. I didn't have a car until I was married. I put my time and money into airplanes. Anything is easy if we start young. Any of those kids could solo in less than ten hours.

Contact

I have to respectfully disagree. There is some kids that work hard, but a lot are just born with smarts. My brother is very book smart. Took calculus for something to do. But give him tools and something to fix and he's not gonna get it without a manual. I'm the polar opposite. Book stupid, bad grades, never graduated. But give me tools and I'll tear most anything apart and fix it. Same goes for flying and running equipment. It takes him way longer to get onto it and I can just jump into anything and it doesn't take long. Not saying everyone is like this, but I think lots of people are gifted one way or another. Of course there's another ways those people that are just great at everything naturally. I'm far from one of those.

I think there's a pretty broad spectrum for both cases. But in both cases, teaching the discipline to consistently work even when you don't want to goes a LONG way towards success. And without digging deep into the individual cases (which I'm sure this board didn't have the time or man-power to do), there's no way to decide with 100% certainty between the kid who may not understand calculus but has great ethic and a mechanical understanding and from the kid who's too smart for life and will likely become a rocket scientist. They have to use a set of metrics to help them that will help them choose the applicants who will have the best chance of success in order to ensure their program isn't wasted.

I graduated high school having done as little homework as possible. I take tests well and generally remember things if I hear or read them once. My folks kept pushing me to get better grades, but I had it figured out - I could take a few zeros on smaller assignments (because I was lazy and didn't want to do them) and bring the course grades up to B's with the big tests and projects.

That did NOT work in college and I had to figure out some discipline real fast. And it was painful to do that late in life.

Smart gets a person so far, but discipline will take a person farther than you think.

Sorry, but you simply can't generalize on this stuff. We are all individuals, with very individual skills and learning styles. And passions.....a huge factor in how we function as well.

I've had students who were extremely smart in school with straight A work in tough majors, and we're also very gifted and fast learners in flying. I've also had students who were very smart but really struggled to fly well. And, yes, a few not straight A students who picked up flying fast.

But again, a lot has to do with the individual's passion and desire to do something. A lazy individual may cruise through flight training, but still wind up a lousy pilot if they don't have the passion to really learn everything they can about flying.

MTV

Judging from the usage of apostrophes around here, I'd say not so much... Haha.

I was a solid C student throughout high school and college, but when it came to my personal hobbies like flying, I was an A+ student, and by that I don't mean I was excellent at it-- I was excellent at diving into it and committing to it. I think academic performance, in whatever shape, is a function mostly of motivation, enthusiasm, and commitment. Those things trump talent and natural intelligence. No one has ever offered me, nor would I expect, a scholarship based on my academic performance.

However, if you have two kids who are both equally passionate about aviation, and you need some metric by which to award a scholarship, I don't think it's wrong to reward good grades. It does reflect commitment and responsibility to some extent.

Excellent points so far. Mikes comment about not generalizing is really my reason for asking the question. The application for the scholarships uses grades, gpa, and sat scores as bait (probably 20% of the questions). If high academic scores are not a standout quality of pilots that actually go on to use their licenses, then maybe it shouldn't be a criteria. If that's the case, then what questions would be more indicative of lifelong pilots that will continue to promote aviation after the check ride?

Don't know if it's dyslexia, ignorance or what, but one guy I know who is a helluva good stick can hardly read or write. I know a number of other guys who were student pilots for years, literally, because they do poorly or fear that they'll do poorly at tests. Therefore they avoid them. Written, computer multiple choice, or oral-- doesn't matter. Once they got signed off to solo they pretty much fizzled out on the flight training, just came back every 90 days for another signoff from their CFI. Most of these guys owned their own airplane, so there wasn't the constant pressure from the flight school / FBO environment to follow through and finish up. They all eventually got their ticket, but if their CFI's had pushed them harder they all would have gotten their license years before they actually did. IMHO the CFI's didn't do them any favors allowing them to slide by for so long.

I was one of those CFIs. My farmer and rancher student pilots were good pilots and stayed out of other pilots' way. They all voted too.

My ex-step daughter was a below average student, fighting for Cs. For her fifteenth birthday I gave her three flight lessons, she was fascinated. She found what she like and went after it with a passion, studied everything that she could read about flying. All of her grades went up almost immediately. She just needed to find something that made school/learning make sense. Soloed on her sixteenth birthday. She would have deserved the scholarship, but you wouldn't have known it from her grades before she started flying.

This question sounds a lot like the EQ vs. IQ debate. I've known plenty of really intelligent people who can't for the life of them function normally in society under any circumstance. On the other hand I also know several high school drop outs who are millionaires because of their ingenuity and ability to interact with others and persevere.

It makes me envision that poor high water kid in the aviation jump suit that the "old man flying club" dressed up so they could parade him around the latest fly-in in hopes of him becoming the next greatest cadet for their future. The poor kid can't possibly hold a conversation anything short of awkward for anybody within earshot but for the life of him won't stop trying because, well, he's the one!! He's the big scholarship winner!! One has to wonder if he was really the right person for the award and/or if he was ready for it?? But what could go wrong, he has strait A's.

As for me, a C was a good grade. My third grade principle (Mr. Crouch) called my mom in for a conference to tell her that I would not amount to anything in life. Then again he ate half eaten sandwiches and apples out of the garbage cans at lunch. What a douche. I wasn't dumb, maybe even not that lazy but I sure was a bi-product of the public education system and was not engaged by my teachers. I can't blame them though, with 30 students how can they justify focusing special attention on me to figure out how I needed to learn. In the 11th grade I figure out how to engage school on my own and though I barely did any homework or studying I managed to get A's and B's. I went on to go to community college for 3.5 years to learn my trade and got a job right after doing exactly what I always wanted while making three times the amount of money than both of my brothers (one with a masters degree and one with a bachelors). And I had no debt!!

After starting my career (age 21), buying my first house (age 22), getting married (age 25) and having my first dog I decided to learn to fly. I was finished with my training in three months and passed my test on the first try four months after starting. I did a home study CD ground school course and found a local instructor who is still one of my best friends to this day.

I would never have qualified for the scholarship. It would have been nice, but apparently I didn't need it. We home school our kids. Education is a lot more than good grades. I may continue to mis-use apostrophes but I'll take that any day over a high water jump suit and a mis-given scholarship.

CW

I've been a teacher for the last six years and have held an aviation club for the last four years and here are some of my thoughts.

High achieving students tend to want to be involved in everything but may not have a strong interest or passion in what they are participating in. They participate just to say they did on college resumes, yearbooks, etc

What are these schools doing to helping all students succeed from various backgrounds (English language learners, socioeconomically disadvantages, minority groups, etc). Are these schools providing a plethora of resources, interventions, and policies to support achievement for all students and their families? If the answer is yes, than you know your low achievers are more likely choosing to fail and not good candidates for the scholarship. If the answer is no, than the school is not effectively educating and meeting the needs of all students and certain kids already have the odds stacked against them before they get into the classroom. The scholarship maybe missing out on some great candidates if GPA is a major factor in your decision.

I think you need to look at the work ethic, character, and passion of the students as well. Obviously this is harder because its not reported as a numbers.

I would love to hear more about your program. We have been expanding our aviation club / program over the last few years.

We have local control of schools, which means they are as good as the local community wants them to be. I left that business because the parents just wanted their kids to get As and didn't care if they learned anything. High School principals are the most cowardly, back pedaling, group, generally, that I have ever come into contact with. My wife, a much better diplomat, stayed with it 37 years.

My fourteen years at Tohatch High north of Gallup, I liked. The parents just wanted the kids to learn. The kids just wanted to learn. Grades meant little, and standing out was taboo anyway. 97% of Navajo parents vote. I met a lot of politicians out to press the flesh at Tohatchi. Not too hard, though. Shaking hands up and down like we do is also taboo. Brings too much attention to ones self. Nice, soft, barley touching handshake. Ya te with the Ya up in your nose, not Yah te hey.

Those who have contact with various mechanical machines, like farmers, make the best pilots because airplanes are quite simple machines. Anybody who can run a backhoe smoothly already know how to hover a helicopter. Just rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time. Same as crosswind landing in an airplane. Coordination of controls is fine is some places and not worth a dam in others.

I'll start by paraphrasing a Mark Twain quote that goes something like, "don't let school get in the way of your education."

Grades, GPA, test scores are not a great indicator of how someone will function in any type of job but personality is difficult to quantify into a usable metric. To me academics are more of a measure of someones determination to make a decision and stick with it to completion.

A collateral duty I have had over the last three years is recruiting for my NROTC unit. The best students usually do have fantastic academic backgrounds but what really sets those that are successful apart from the rest is personal initiative. When I am interviewing someone that is interested in becoming an officer it's pretty obvious within the first few minutes if they are charging at this career because of strong personal desires or if mom and dad and pushing them to do something productive and do not want to pay for his/her school. The high school senior that independently seeks me out and has already researched our program makes a much stronger impression than someone that still needs parental oversight to make life decisions. Parents helping out during the decision making process is fine, but it should be the student in control and asking the questions.

Aviation requires both kinds of smarts. You have to be able to wade through FAA jargon, understand, and apply the concepts within. You also have to have some semblance of "monkey skills" needed to fly an aircraft. Someone who doesn't study and/or has no physical coordination won't pass a check-ride. Likewise someone who can't apply critical thinking in aviation scenarios will not last long when confronted with deteriorating weather or a mechanical problem.

Nosedragger wrote:Excellent points so far. Mikes comment about not generalizing is really my reason for asking the question. The application for the scholarships uses grades, gpa, and sat scores as bait (probably 20% of the questions). If high academic scores are not a standout quality of pilots that actually go on to use their licenses, then maybe it shouldn't be a criteria. If that's the case, then what questions would be more indicative of lifelong pilots that will continue to promote aviation after the check ride?

It may be too late for the one you're working on right now, but in future, I'd want to see a relatively short essay which outlines what they want to do with their life, and how they plan to use aviation in that pursuit.

Grades are not a great metric for this purpose.

If you're in the midst of trying to select a recipient now, consider calling each of the applicants and asking them some questions.

Again, I wouldn't NECESSARILY worry too much about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc (though I'd sure take it into account as a tie breaker) , but where is their passion, and how is this scholarship going to help them get there?

MTV

mtv wrote:

Nosedragger wrote:Excellent points so far. Mikes comment about not generalizing is really my reason for asking the question. The application for the scholarships uses grades, gpa, and sat scores as bait (probably 20% of the questions). If high academic scores are not a standout quality of pilots that actually go on to use their licenses, then maybe it shouldn't be a criteria. If that's the case, then what questions would be more indicative of lifelong pilots that will continue to promote aviation after the check ride?

It may be too late for the one you're working on right now, but in future, I'd want to see a relatively short essay which outlines what they want to do with their life, and how they plan to use aviation in that pursuit.

Grades are not a great metric for this purpose.

If you're in the midst of trying to select a recipient now, consider calling each of the applicants and asking them some questions.

Again, I wouldn't NECESSARILY worry too much about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc (though I'd sure take it into account as a tie breaker) , but where is their passion, and how is this scholarship going to help them get there?

MTV

It does have that. Maybe it's not far off. I guess when you're interviewing seventeen year olds, grades and summer jobs is about all they have for a resume.

mtv wrote:...where is their passion, and how is this scholarship going to help them get there? MTV

Exactly. "Monkey Skills" are the easy part. Judgment is much harder. But what really matters is their passions and goals, and how that scholarship will feed into both of them. No passion, or no goals, and an opportunity that might change a life will sit on a shelf.

Nosedragger wrote:

mtv wrote:

Nosedragger wrote:Excellent points so far. Mikes comment about not generalizing is really my reason for asking the question. The application for the scholarships uses grades, gpa, and sat scores as bait (probably 20% of the questions). If high academic scores are not a standout quality of pilots that actually go on to use their licenses, then maybe it shouldn't be a criteria. If that's the case, then what questions would be more indicative of lifelong pilots that will continue to promote aviation after the check ride?

It may be too late for the one you're working on right now, but in future, I'd want to see a relatively short essay which outlines what they want to do with their life, and how they plan to use aviation in that pursuit.

Grades are not a great metric for this purpose.

If you're in the midst of trying to select a recipient now, consider calling each of the applicants and asking them some questions.

Again, I wouldn't NECESSARILY worry too much about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc (though I'd sure take it into account as a tie breaker) , but where is their passion, and how is this scholarship going to help them get there?

MTV

It does have that. Maybe it's not far off. I guess when you're interviewing seventeen year olds, grades and summer jobs is about all they have for a resume.

--and their hobbies, and sports, and especially their other extra-curricular activities. Personally, I'd be looking for the "whole person" if I were the granting authority for scholarships of any kind, aviation or otherwise.

One of my own extra things to do for a few years was to help judge the Junior Miss contests in Laramie. They were a talent show of sorts, but the whole girl concept made our jobs easier. Sure, this one might be able to sing better than that one, or perhaps this one could recite some lengthy speech flawlessly while that one stumbled over the preamble to the Constitution, but what made the difference was the whole kid--their passions, their interests, their concern for others. What will they do for society?

Cary

Thanks for all the comments. i noticed that either our wizards are humble, or we don't have many.

I was looking for insight after the fact because the whole thing bothered me, but it's over.

I have a hard time determining the motivation of teenagers, especially with the social media movement in full swing, I don't know if these kids are wanting to fly for an epic selfie to post on their facebook page or if they're serious. Anyway, the high achievers that interviewed well got the grants. The bar was set with the first contestant that did a good job winning the first scholarship fair and square. The poor kids that were shy and awkward with marginal grades didn't really get fair consideration on the second round, even though they're probably more likely to become lasting pilots. That's the way it goes sometimes.