Scholarship hall

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A scholarship hall is a dwelling for college students who are receiving scholarship assistance. Usually these halls base scholarship status on academic scholarships, but in some cases athletic scholarships are the basis for eligibility to live there.

Scholarship halls are a means to enable students who have very little wealth to offset not just tuition costs, but room and board costs. Since room and board (board is an archaic term for 'meals') costs are often higher than tuition costs at state universities, this is a significant benefit and thus one of great interest for those with limited funds.

At the University of Kansas, one of many U.S. universities that have scholarship halls, there are eleven "schol halls", all located on campus very close to the academic buildings. These halls house around fifty residents. Sleeping accommodations vary. Some are provided as a four-person set of rooms with two rooms with bunk beds off a common room. Others have a combination of bare-bones sleeping dormitory rooms that have about twenty bunk beds, with resident's personal space in a nearby study room they share with two, three, or four other people. That study room has space for desks, chairs, lights, bookcases, and resident's clothes. Bathrooms are usually communal with many showers and sinks in a single bathroom per wing or floor.

Scholarship halls have many traditions, including an emphasis on the primary reason for attending college being to study and achieve high academic standing. Residents who fail to achieve minimum GPAs are not invited to return the following term. Many residents spend all four years living in the same hall, and thus the hall is in some ways like a fraternity or sorority, without the Greek traditions but instead with many home-grown ones. The University of Kansas' Battenfeld Scholarship Hall, for example, maintains a storied tradition surrounding its mascot, an interstellar aardvark known as "Haggis." Stephenson Scholarship Hall, also at the University of Kansas, builds hall unity by competing in a yearly "oldmen-newmen" football game, which pits the new members of the hall against the returning members, as well as any alumni who wish to take place.

There are many different arrangements for eating. Some halls provide their residents access to several small kitchen spaces, shared among several residents. Most halls require residents to share some cooking and cleaning duties both for kitchens and other common areas. Larger halls might have a full-time cook, with residents providing sous-chef duties as well as serving and cleanup. By being participants in supporting themselves, scholarship hall residents can get by on an extremely limited budget.