The college scholarship secret hiding in plain sight: your last name

livemint.com:

Derek Gatlin discovered the value of his last name during middle-school detention. A teacher urged him to get serious about school so he could land a special college scholarship. He wouldn’t need a 4.0 grade-point average, athletic accolades or a musical skill.

He just needed to be a Gatlin. (Or, he later learned, a Gatling.) Gatlin didn’t know what the teacher was talking about, but he liked the idea of being the first in his family to go to college. In 2001, as Gatlin entered his senior year, the scholarship offer arrived.

He received a letter from North Carolina State University, about 2,800 miles from home in Olivehurst, Calif., noting his strong SAT score—and his last name. It said if he was admitted, his tuition costs would be covered. “It was the golden ticket, like in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’" Gatlin recalls.

“Then I asked: Where is Raleigh, North Carolina?" Quirky scholarship opportunities abound these days. Funds are set aside for golf caddies, tall children and even those with notable duck-calling abilities. But some scholarships boast other unique criteria.

Namely, names. Descendants of major donors or graduates have long enjoyed an edge in admissions at many colleges. But legacy preference reaches even further at some schools, with money available for people who can trace their lineage directly to specific individuals, or who just happen to have the same last name.

Loyola University Chicago offers scholarships to Catholic students with the last name Zolp. A University of California scholarship gives preference to graduate students from Colombia and direct descendants from the family of the benefactor, Miguel Velez. Among more than a half-dozen “ancestry-based scholarships," as Harvard University