In August 2015, we started our first annual scholarship contest. Since then we have had over 100 applicants apply and submit an essay for consideration by our May deadline. We are humbled by such a strong response to our scholarship this year and deeply appreciate all the efforts and time the applicants have devoted to writing thoughtful responses to our essay question.
The Essay
This year’s question asked students to give their analysis and opinion on the impact of last years landmark Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, on religion, culture, and family law. This was the case in which the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country. As a family law firm in South Carolina, we were deeply interested in seeing what students believed the impact gay marriage would have on families.
After briefly looking over the responses, we believe we got a fair representation of a variety of viewpoints. Some saw the decision as a good thing while others believe it was detrimental to society. Some expected huge impacts on culture while others that there would be minimal changes to the way things are now. We are excited to read through everyone’s essays more thoroughly and may post a blog in the future summarizing some of the best arguments or insights.
The Statistics
This has been a huge opportunity for us to give back to the community and we are grateful to everyone who has helped spread the word about our scholarship. Our data team managed to put together a few insights about this year’s scholarship and our applicants. Here’s what we found:
- The average essay length was 727 words long
- Nearly 25% (27) of our applicants were high school students
- Most applicants were from South Carolina (21) but we also got a good number of applicants from Texas (18) and Florida (9).
Our judges are currently going through the essays and definitely have a difficult task ahead of them. The final winner will be selected in the coming weeks and will be announced on our blog on July 31, 2016.