Kentucky Governor's Scholars Program

The Kentucky Governor's Scholars Program (GSP) is a program to attempt to keep "the brightest" high school seniors inside the state of Kentucky. The program is a five-week program over the summer for students between their junior and senior years of high school. In order to get accepted, prospective juniors must have high academic achievement, including standardized test scores, and be active in the community. In addition, students must write an essay to be accepted into the program. The program itself consists of various classes and other school activities. The 1000 seniors that are selected yearly are eligible to receive scholarships to any in-state public university upon completing the program.

The Kentucky Governor's Scholars Program (GSP) was established in 1983 as an attempt by Kentucky leaders to keep the state's "best and brightest" interested in furthering education and potentially starting a career in the Commonwealth instead of traveling out of the state to do so. It is a five-week summer program for rising high school seniors. Over 1,000 Kentucky students are selected yearly based on a thorough application process detailing their academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, volunteerism, and personal integrity. Each student that is selected is eligible to receive scholarships to any in-state public university within the state of Kentucky, as well as a handful of private institutions. For the duration of the program, located at three local college campuses chosen through a bidding process, scholars have the rare opportunity to experience college life while attending classes on a daily basis. The Governor's Scholars Program emphasizes wide-ranging representation of all Kentucky regions, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds. Participating scholars are granted the opportunity to expand their horizons by forming close relationships with their peers representing all 120 counties in the commonwealth. Funding for the program is largely provided by private donations and state tax revenue. Teachers of these classes are selected through a rigorous process, including a detailed application and an intense interview. Other members of the faculty, commonly known as the "RAs," or resident advisors, compete for limited spots through a similar procedure.

Prior to 1983, the pilot program, started in 1972, was known as the High School Junior Summer Program, and was run as part of the Honors Program at the University of Kentucky. It was an 8 week long program, held coincident with the 8 week long summer school session, during which time approximately 12 high school scholars could experience college life living in a college dormitory while also attending college classes. It included twice-weekly colloquium meetings featuring the 13 programmes of the Civilisation series by Kenneth Clark, and also included outdoor classes for discussion of the differences in the cultural backgrounds of the participating high school scholars from around the commonwealth. Scholars typically took two 3-hour college level courses in addition to the zero credit colloquium class, for a total of 6 credit hours of classes. Upon the completion of the summer term at the University of Kentucky, participants could elect either to enter as Freshmen in their chosen field of study at the University of Kentucky, or to return to their High Schools for their Senior year. The majority of participants elected to return to their high school for their senior year, from which they typically then elected to return to the University of Kentucky on a scholarship rather than attending universities outside the commonwealth, upon graduation from high school. Students in this pilot program were not required to stay on campus during the period of the summer school session, but could elect to attend social events on and off campus, in and around Lexington, KY.

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