7/18 Finale Discussion Thread *Spoilers*

[E-Daddy]

Congrats to Melissa for winning the $250,000 scholarship!!!

And I thought Amari & Scot did a good job as well!!! It was a tough battle and in the end, my early pick won!!! She was my pick to win until Amari won the last spot. After that, it was a battle between Amari & Melissa. At one point, I had though Amari had won!

Anyways, this has been a fun show to watch and clean too. Max's flirtation with Melissa/Alyssa was as dirty as it got! Too bad all of the shows we watch can't be like this.

Amari & Melissa will be missed!!! When I watched the Scholar, I watched it to see those two beautiful women. Neither one disappointed me!!! Goodbye forever, Amari & Melissa!!!

[PWS]

Just to add a few more cheers for Pomona--a lot of my family members have gone to one or another of the Claremont colleges--and all have been very happy with their experiences there. In terms of hardness to get into Pomona might be a half step down from Harvard, but it and Reed in Portland, Oregon, are the the 2 most difficult to get into on the West Coast. Definitely on a par with Amherst, Williams, etc. academically, and all the other schools the students are attending are big universities--not everyone wants classes of several hundred their freshman year.
Re Harvey Mudd....all over the country I've run into Mudd labs, etc.--the Mudd family must have been really into promoting engineering. Mudd competes with schools like MIT for students, hoping again to land those that want the smaller school. But I agree the name's fun.
Students at one of the Claremont schools can take some of their classes at others...so if you are at Pomona you can take drama or art at Scripps for example...which gives them some of the advantages of the big schools in terms of specialized classes (big schools have more variety), since each of the Claremont colleges have somewhat different specialties.
Beautiful location, great climate, and next to LA. But private and NOT cheap, so the $$ will make a big dif.
The one I feel for is Gerald... I'm guessing the money was a big issue, unless he just can't bear to be far from his family. In a state school it is easy to get lost...hope they have an honors program and he is in it.

[Glitternerfball]

Pomona is a well respected school, the Valedic from my school almost went there, went to Williams instead. good to see Amari at Columbia, my good ol' alma! It needs good, down to earth people. There are a thousand max's there.

[Newfherder]

Penny Dean, first woman to swim the English Channel

No, the first woman was Gertrude Ederle, in 1926.

[aly]

I would've been happy seeing any one of them win except Melissa. I liked Melissa the first couple episodes, but she became very annoying very quickly. I sometimes had to mute the TV during her interviews! I was really pulling for Amari and Scot - very impressed by them both. At least they all got some money though. Great group of deserving people.

[CCL]

I agree with you Aly (cute dog, by the way). But I came in to say that I'm glad they each got some money. The computer was nice and all but the $$ will be of more benefit. That was good.

[Mariner]

I still want to see a follow up episode with tape of the Davis/Gerald/Max/Melissa/Alyssa trip to Europe. You just know that had to be interesting.

[Positive K]

I still want to see a follow up episode with tape of the Davis/Gerald/Max/Melissa/Alyssa trip to Europe. You just know that had to be interesting.

I can tell you how that would go right now.
The ladies will throw themselves at Max. Alyssa will make snarky comments about Davis behind his back, but he'll be too dense to realize it. Also, everywhere they go, Gerald will be the third wheel.

[CCL]

I don't think they had to go together. I was looking at Davis' myspace account and he was talking about being in Europe with Max. And on her account, Alyssa was talking about being in Europe and she didn't mention being with any of the other contestants.

[William13]

I was rather disappointed that the final came down to something as subjective as answering questions and giving speeches. The problem that I have is that it was so subjective. The scholarship committee may have been real admissions officers, but I was never impressed by them.

I was hoping that Milana would win, but I thought that Melissa was a good choice.

The very moment that the question of who in history would you like to meet was asked I thought of Jesus for exactly the reasons that Scot said. But I thought that his answer about human laziness was rather bizarre. I thought that his final speech was just arrogant, something worthy of Davis. I know that the whole point was to sell yourself, but I found that way he described himself as the one who could make the most difference was not convincing.

I was impressed by Melissa from the first episode and I thought that her answers and speech were well thought out.

Liz's answers of Angelina Jolie struck me as weird. Out of everyone who has ever lived that's who you would want to meet? At least the answer showed some individuality and was not one of those answers where you try to say what you think the interviewer wants to hear. I will give her credit for that.

Despite being intelligent and personable I was never able to warm up to Amari for some reason.

I also thought that it was rather strange that the finalists had to pick someone as an advocate who had previously been eliminated because they had not been an effective advocate for themselves. Maybe it was easier to speak on someone else's behalf because they all did well.

I hope that if there is a second season of this show that they pace it better. Of course they want to build suspense, but with all the pauses and the "right after this we will be announcing the winner" moments (and then the recap after the commercial break) every episode seemed like an episode from E's True Hollywood Story. It seems a shame that a competion with some bright, successful people felt the need to dumb it down so much.

Congratulations to all the scholars. They really were an impressive group.