"Where we're not Hooters, but we sure wish we were!"
Let's be really clear about that. We're not Hooters, we're not affiliated with Hooters, and Hooter's is not sponsoring this scholarship--unless they tell us they'd like to! If you prefer, you can visit Hooters.com here. Still, we're offering this scholarship, and they're not, so you might want to stick around.
Which sort of leads to two questions. Why the scholarship, and why name it after Hooters? Well, the scholarship will serve two purposes. First, it's a chance for us to offer one student a little help. Let's face it. College costs a fortune these days. This is an opportunity for one student to win $1,000 to help out with those costs.
Second, we're curious to see how students will use social networoking to promote their entries.
As for the name, well, why not? We could have called it The World Peace Essay Scholarship, but our goals aren't quite that ambitious. We are for world peace, but we hate reading essays.
This name just seemed a bit more fun, and who knows, maybe we can use it to convince our wives that we'll need to have weekly meetings at Hooters to discuss various administrative matters. FYI, their buffalo chicken sandwich ROCKS!
Scholarship FAQs
Any U.S. student in high school or college. That includes non-traditional students, so if you're a 30 year old parent going to school part-time--no problem! Remember, Hooters employees are just as welcome to enter as anyone! And yes--guys are welcome to enter.
Students under 18 MUST get their parent's consent prior to entering. Any minor who does not get prior parental consent is disqualified.
That's the great part! It's easy, and maybe even fun. You simply create a video and upload it to YouTube.com. Please be sure include the words "Hooters Scholarship 2009" in the title of your video. This is critical, as your video has to show up in a YouTube search based on those words for you to win. Feel free to enter once, twice, or more!
Please do not include any personal information in your video or in it's title. If you're under 18, your parent or guardian MUST approve your video.
That's simple too. On April 30th, at 5 pm eastern standard time, we'll search YouTube.com for "Hooters Scholarship 2009." If your video is ranked #1 for that search, you win! If for any reason we can't view those search results at that moment, we'll do so as soon as we can and identify the winner at that time.
We don't mean to weasel out of anything, we simply realize that YouTube, and even the internet itself, are unavailable at some times.
Absolutely not! In fact, if you can get a couple dozen photos and a sound file (an mp3 of a favorite song is fine) on you computer, you can probably do it in 15 minutes or so using the AutoMovie feature in Windows Moviemaker.
We encourage you to both study YouTube and to be creative. You'll find that YouTube ranks videos, in part, on how many times they are viewed and by how highly viewers rate the video. It might help to email friends and family and ask them to your video on YouTube and rate it highly. If you do, you should probably send them a link directly to your video.
Do you use MySpace.com or facebook.com? Encourage your contacts there to view and rate your video as well. Have a web site? A Blog? A club or team you belong to? You get the idea.
I think a funny video has the best shot, but feel free to use whatever approach you like. Please keep all videos family friendly (i.e., PG).
Please remember not to spam anyone. If YouTube removes your video, for any reason, you're out of the running.
What id the deadline to enter?
We'll identify the winner on April 30th, at 5 pm eastern standard time. But entries are welcome now, and judging starts as soon as the first video is viewed and rated.
How will the prize be awarded?
We'll contact the winner through YouTube email. They will then send us an email address we can use to send their $1,000 via paypal. If we have to, of course we can send a check instead.
If the winner is 18 or over, we'd like to post a photo, their hometown, and a brief comment. That is optional though. We absolutely respect your privacy.
Will the prize definitely be awarded?
If Hooters shuts us down or YouTube deletes all entries, we won't award the scholarship. I hope that doesn't happen. If it does, we'll donate the $1,000 to Heifer International.
We absolutely respect your privacy. For that reason we insist that you include no personal information in your video, and that those under 18 review all rules with a parent prior to entering.
Jen asked:
ok- I am curious if you guys are actually going to give away a scholarship. I am interested in doing this, but it does not look like any one has posted a video yet. So... If I'm the only person that posts a video on youtube, will I automatically win?
We responded:
As
crazy as that sounds, you're right. If we have only one entry, that will
be the winner. Please just be sure to follow the simple rules listed at
http://www.hootersscholarship.com.
Good luck! Questions?
