September/October 2009 Issue

Study Long and Prosper

Eight unusual college scholarships.

Illustration: Gordon Studer

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[For the rest of MoJo’s Mini College Guide, read 10 Cool Schools, 6 Cutting Edge Jobs, and Give ‘Em Hellraisers.]

Starfleet Academy Scholarship: For 10 Trekkies from the next generation, logically. $500.

David Letterman Scholarship: For the Ball State University student with the best idea for a creative project, regardless of GPA. (Dave was a C student.) $10,000.

Duck Brand Duct Tape “Stuck at Prom” Scholarship: For the couple with the best all-duct-tape prom outfits. $6,000 per couple.

Tall Clubs International Student Scholarship: For women 5’10” or taller and men 6’2″ or taller. The payout: one large.

Chick and Sophie Major Memorial Duck Calling Contest Scholarship: For the young waterfowl impersonator. $1,500.

American Fire Sprinkler Association Scholarship: For 10 high scorers on a quiz about the dangers of combustion. $2,000.

The Twin Pack: For kids who shared a womb and plan to share a campus, Virginia’s Randolph College offers a 15 percent break on tuition. Worth $8,376.

Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship: For special boys or girls planning careers in children’s media. Can you say “$10,000”?

Additional reporting by Ben Buchwalter, Andy Kroll, and Stephen Robert Morse

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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