Ben McColgan’s prefect status, academic achievements and continued involvement in extracurricular activities are, he says, the reason why he received a future leadership scholarship to Massey University.
He has been involved in it all – from achieving NCEA endorsed with merit right through to volunteering his time to service programmes like St Paul’s Over the Fence Ministry initiative, which requires students to volunteer at decile one primary schools.
This year alone he has been a member of the title winning 1st XI cricket and 1st XV rugby teams; won the Fieldays Young Innovators Award with three other St Paul’s students; and led the student cohort as the head of Sargood House and as a full school prefect.
He says he went out of his way to get involved in as many opportunities as possible, knowing it would set him up for the future.
“I went out and got involved in as much as I could so I would have a strong CV when applying for scholarships,” he said.
“This also worked favourably when asking teachers to write testimonials for me.”
Headmaster Grant Lander and Deputy Headmaster Peter Hampton wrote more than 70 testimonials for St Paul’s students which helped strengthen their scholarship applications.
“Mr Hampton and Mr Lander helped hugely that’s another reason why I think I got the scholarship,” Ben said.
The 18-year-old has always had his sights set on Massey and thought the future leaders’ scholarship was something he would be a good candidate for and he was right.
He found out about his success while in Australia on the cricket tour with St Paul’s 1st XI and plans to use the $5000 scholarship to pay for part of his conjoint degree of business and science.
