I found my Aunt Eva's roll recipe; I continue to miss her, but maybe I won't have to miss the rolls

    Pictured above is my Aunt Eve Lehman Hurdle's roll recipe as it appeared in the 1976 Marshall County Historical Society Bicentennial Cookbook.

    I recently saw another roll recipe on Facebook and "shared" it so it would be on my timeline. It wasn't long until a cousin chimed in about how she sure would love one of Aunt Eva's "little pan of rolls," as she called them when she dropped by.

    Aunt Eva would make and freeze a huge batch of these rolls on a Saturday, or perhaps another day when she had household help. She then would deliver them at the first sign of a sneeze by a friend or family member. Some people called them Eva's "death rolls," because they were often the first food item to arrive after the death of a loved one. Aunt Eva never beat the Grim Reaper, but she came close a couple of times.

    They were truly good; better than Sister Shubert by a long shot.

   I'm not sure what "fat" means. Jinny assures me it means Crisco. I've done some reading and some outstanding rolls use lard. Jinny can't stand the idea of using lard, so I will either use the lard secretly or use Crisco for the "fat."

    Likewise, I didn't know how to "scald" milk. I found this tutorial on how to scald milk for recipes.

    I haven't "tested" this recipe. I know I should, but I spent some time looking for it and decided to share it while it was on my mind. I plan to make a few pans soon. If any reader should beat me to it, by all means let me know how it turns out.

________________________

    I would guess that Aunt Eva met my Uncle Joe Hurdle at the University of Southern Mississippi. Uncle Joe and Uncle Jake (and others?) attended Southern, then Mississippi Normal College, because their first cousin was married to the president, J.B. George.

    It was such a different world back then. I doubt many college presidents today would allow their wife's cousins to take up residence in the president's home to scrimp on college expenses, but that is what they did.

    Uncle Jake's college expenses were defrayed by a $25 per month contribution made by his first cousin, Jimmy Hurdle, the son of Gid Hurdle of Taylor (my great-uncle). While Jimmy attended the Mississippi Synodical College in Holly Springs my grandfather gave him $25 per month on condition that he would repay the loan by helping one of his cousins when it was his turn.

    While Uncle Joe and Uncle Jake were attended Southern, my maternal grandfather was also earning a degree, so that he could enter the Methodist ministry. He had already served as a school superintendent of the Philadelphia schools in the 1920s, so I find it interesting that it took more college education to be a preacher than an educator. I know Uncle Jake was on friendly terms with my grandfather at USM; not sure about Uncle Joe. So it ended up being an odd coincidence when my parents met.

    My grandfather, Inman Moore, managed the campus bookstore while he was a student. The school gave him the use of an acre or two of land where the football stadium is today so that he could have a couple of milk cows. He would milk the cows in the morning and my mother and Uncle Inman would deliver the milk to a few faculty members each day.

    Aunt Eva was a native of Meadville in Franklin County, and read the Franklin Advocate until her death. (I had the pleasure of visiting with Advocate editor and publisher, the late David Webb, some years ago and he couldn't get over how much I looked like Aunt Eva's nephew, a Lehman. I explained that Aunt Eva and I weren't blood kin, but he insisted that I still looked like her nephew). Her parents immigrated from Germany, and she had the chests they used to contain their belongings on the ocean voyage refinished and proudly on display.

    I miss her. I miss her rolls.

Twenty-seven of 224 Oxford High seniors last year scored 30 or higher on the ACT

    I recently posted congratulations to Oxford High School's 11 National Merit Semifinalists. And I mentioned once again that this massive number of Semifinalists isn't an anomaly, but rather the result of ongoing brain clustering in the Oxford Community.
    This brain clustering is one of the most important socio-economic trends occurring in both our state and nation, and I'm going to post some more thoughts at a future time.
    Anyway, two days after my National Merit post, in which I stated my opinion that Oxford High School is the best open-enrollment high school in the state, the School District posted on Facebook that 27 of the 217 seniors last year who took the ACT scored a 30 or higher. And there are only 224 seniors, so almost every student took the ACT.
    The school district's post:

Oxford school officials just announced that 27 Oxford High School seniors in the 2013 graduating class scored a composite score of 30 or above on the ACT college entrance exam, reaffirming what school officials know: Oxford High School seniors continue to perform at the top among their peers on the national college entrance exam.
Of 224 Oxford High seniors, 217 took the ACT: that’s 97 percent of the 2013 senior class who took the ACT. It's also the highest number of high school seniors who have ever taken the ACT at Oxford High.

    I would guess that perhaps half of Mississippi high schools did not have a single senior who scored a 30 or higher on the ACT last year. In fact, quite a few don't have a STAR student every year, as that award requires a minimum ACT of 25. So for Oxford to produce 27 of these high scorers -- 12 percent of the senior class -- is just unheard of.
    Of course congratulations to all of these students are in order; but the school district and the community as a whole are to be congratulated as well. And I am desperate to know whether there is an open enrollment public school in the entire nation with a greater percentage of high scorers.

Here are the types of scholarships this year's National Merit Finalists can look forward to

    I've talked about the National Merit awards in recent posts and have mentioned the possibility of scholarships based on being named a semifinalist or finalist.
    The College Confidential website has a list of full or almost full scholarships available to National Merit Finalists. The beauty of these scholarships is that they are automatic. In many cases additional scholarships can be piled on so that a student truly attends college for free, with tuition, books, room, board and spending money provided. The latter takes some application and effort.
    Many solid state universities have established top-notch Honors Colleges over the past 20 years or so. Students in the honors program live with other honors students, take many of their classes with other honors students, get first choice of classes, and are essentially treated like minor royalty by the university.
    The College Confidential list is easy enough to read that I don't need to elaborate much. But I will mention three programs:
    Ole Miss enrolled 40 National Merit Finalists last year. Most, no doubt, are in the McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College. Ole Miss guarantees Finalists full tuition and the cost of a dorm room, with additional scholarship money available. The Honors College has been very aggressive in trying to keep some of the best Mississippi students in-state, which translates into lots of potential merit aid. Last year the average ACT score of the roughly 200 students admitted to the Honors College was between 31 and 32. This group of kids is as talented a bunch as you will find almost anywhere.
    The University of Alabama has been one of the most active in the country in recruiting Finalists. Last year 241 Finalists enrolled at UA. And for good reason; the UA National Scholars program is one of the best in the nation, offering 10 semesters of free tuition (and more) that can be used for both undergraduate and graduate work. So a student who arrives with a substantial number of hours through Advanced Placement or dual enrollment can go to graduate school free or almost free.
    I'm not sure how many people from the Southeast consider the University of Oklahoma, but it also boasts a tremendous Finalist package. It's not a full ride, but like Alabama it is a 10 semester award that can be used for both undergraduate and gradate school. Oklahoma houses its National Scholars together and gives them all sorts of other perks. A full-time administrator is devoted solely to providing special assistance and advice to these students.
    I could go on, but there is no need to. It's worth the effort to set a goal of being a National Merit Finalist.
    And what if a student sets this as a goal and doesn't make it? Even the best student can have a bad test day. All is not lost. Most of these schools offer good merit aid for students with high ACT scores and good grades. So even if a student has a bad day when he takes the PSAT, he can still, with luck and effort, get a nearly full ride. But it won't be automatic, which is the beauty of the Finalist scholarships.

Fuddy-duddy me had no idea of how much tuition has gone up in 25 years.

    I just had an experience that shows just how old and out of touch I am.

    I blogged a few weeks ago (I haven't been very active lately) that Ash was taking a single college course and much to my surprise he got a tuition scholarship. From my post:

After his acceptance into the program we got a very welcome surprise. We had expected to pay about $400 in tuition to cover Ash's three-hour college course. When he got his acceptance email he also got a notice that all high school students in the Ole Miss dual credit program receive a tuition scholarship. So his cost to take the college course is limited to the price of the textbook.

    Well, I logged into Ash's account today and saw he had a balance due. I called the bursar to see what was going on and was informed that the cost to take a single three-hour course is roughly $840. Ash's tuition scholarship covered only half of this amount.
    My best recollection is that when I was in school in the early- to mid-1980s the cost of tuition was substantially less than $1,000, with the student activity fee and other costs adding about $300 to this amount. I tried to find some exact numbers but came up empty, so I have to go from memory. I didn't pay much more than that for law school, perhaps $1,500 per semester total. I remember thinking that out of all the costs associated with going to college, tuition was just a drop in the bucket.
    UPDATE: Several people have posted on my Facebook thread that the total undergraduate tuition in the mid-1980s was about $750.
    Tuition is no longer a drop in the bucket. It's a bucket full! The cost for an Ole Miss undergraduate attending full time is $3,300 per semester. The cost for law school is almost $6,800 per semester.
    Things aren't so bad when you put an inflation calculator to it. $1,100 in 1984 had the same buying power as $2,500 today. $1,500 in 1987 had the same buying power as $3,000 today. So undergraduate tuition has risen 50 percent more than the Consumer Price Index; law school tuition, though, has outpaced inflation by more than 100 percent.
    When you put an inflation calculator to this, you find that $750 in 1985 had the same buying power as 1,630 today. Since current tuition is $3,300, undergraduate tuition at Ole Miss has risen at more than twice the inflation right. So in constant dollars, tuition has doubled in less than 20 years.
    Of course, the tuition at other state schools is far higher than Ole Miss. Tuition and fees at the Universities of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, or Texas run from $5,000 to $5,500 per semester. So despite the tuition increases Ole Miss is still only charges in-state residents about two-thirds of the tuition in other states. Out-of-state students pay an extra $5,000 per semester, which for many students is still a bargain compared to other colleges.
    Part of what is going on with these tuition increases is that virtually all state governments have cut back on support for higher education, as this USA Today story illustrates. The money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is frequently from the students themselves. And today's college campuses just seem a lot nicer than they used to. This luxury costs money, too.
    There are some legitimate concerns about the amount of debt that students are having to take on to finance these ever-increasing tuition costs. That's a post for another day. For now, I'll quit my belly-achin' and go pay the bursar  -- and be grateful that we got a half-scholarship.

Congratulations to Oxford High's 11 National Merit Semifinalists -- about five percent of junior class

National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists are: Abbigail Pullen, Yuqi Zhao, Dion Kevin, Brian Clancy, Matthew Forgette, Yoomin Jo, Joelle Young, Cynthia Torma, Shreya Mathur, Mary Kathryn Pearson, and Reid Mallette.

    I mentioned about three weeks ago that the release of National Merit semifinalists was coming soon. It came and not a word from me. Better late than never.
    Once again Oxford High School had a tremendous number of semifinalists: Eleven this year. Last year the school boasted a record 12 semifinalists. I said at the time I didn't think these large Semifinalist numbers were an anomaly. I believe they are the wave of the future. People from throughout the Delta and other parts of the state are flocking to Oxford because of the good school system. The type of parents who are willing to make this type of move tend to have smart children, sometimes very smart.
    The Tupelo Daily Journal reported the names of Northeast Mississippi students who made the Semifinalist cut this year. There were a total of 18 Semifinalists in the entire northeast region covered by that newspaper, which goes as far west as Lafayette and Marshall Counties and as far south as Oktibbeha County. Eleven of the 18 were from Oxford High School. They are:

• Brian Clancy
• Matthew Forgette
• Yoomin Jo
• Dion Kevin
• Reid Mallette
• Shreya Mathur
• Mary Pearson
• Abbigail Pullen
• Cynthia Torma
• Joelle Young
• Yuqi Zhao

   There are approximately 16,000 Semifinalists nationally; this year Mississippi had 136. Each state has a separate cutoff score, which is designed to recognize the top one percent of students in each state, and so the number from a low-population state will fluctuate a good bit each year, as it  is impossible to set a score that will recognize exactly one percent. Mississippi's cutoff score this year was 207, up three points from last year. By comparison, Tennessee has a cutoff score of 212; Massachusetts and New Jersey have cutoffs of 224. National Merit also offers "Commended" status to the almost-made-its, roughly the top four percent. This year the national cutoff for Commended status was 203 for all states, unchanged from last year.
    The Mississippi School for Math and Science apparently led the National Merit race statewide (from a percentage standpoint), with 12 of approximately 120 juniors being selected, or about 10 percent. Of course, MSMS should do well; it's a magnet boarding school that only takes extremely bright kids.Oxford had 11 out of approximately 220 students selected, or about five percent of juniors. I can't find the link, but I believe Madison Central High School had 23 Semifinalists this year. But that school has more than 550 juniors, so about four percent of its students were Semifinalists.
    As I mentioned earlier, Oxford High School is starting out with some of the brightest kids in the state. But to achieve the numbers that it's getting the school is clearly doing something right. This past year Oxford also had eight students who scored a 35 or 36 on the ACT. Roughly 5,000 students nationally made a 35 or 36, out of almost 1.7 million who took it. It's just unheard of for a relatively small school to produce these kinds of scores.
    Oxford High School is not perfect, but a strong argument can be made that academically it is the best public school in the state of Mississippi, and that it is better than almost all private schools as well. The only possibly "better" schools I can think of in the entire state are MSMS, which isn't open enrollment, and private St. Andrews Episcopal School in Jackson. Of course the floor is open for additional nominations in the comment section.
    I'm fascinated by the opportunities that Mississippi and other students from low cutoff states have in gaining Semifinalist status. In the most competitive states one has to score in something like the national 99.7th percentile to snare the award. In Mississippi it's more like the 97.5th percentile.
   What this means is that every student who participates in the Duke TIP program as a seventh-grader ought to have a shot at earning Semifinalist status. The TIP program is open to students in roughly the top five to seven percent of their class all students nationally, and I think five years of hard work can move one from the 93rd percentile to the 97th percentile. A Duke TIP participant whose ACT score puts him in the top half of this group ought to be a Semifinalist -- provided he puts in the work that he is supposed to over the next five years. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many students are parents are aware of the fact that Semifinalist might be an attainable goal.
    I've written about the National Merit test a number of times, and in the next few days I'm going to have a couple of additional posts. If it's overkill, no one is required to read them!

Edited 9-26-13 to add photo.

Ash is our family's newest Rebel; he's taking his first Ole Miss course this semester

    Ash started college this week at Ole Miss. He got his student ID today.
    Okay, he's only taking one class. It's through a dual credit program offered by most Mississippi high schools whereby he can attend one or more college classes and earn both high school and college credit. Being able to actually attend classes at Ole Miss is one of the benefits of living in or near a college town.
    Any high school junior or senior with a 3.0 grade-point-average is eligible to take college courses for dual credit with the permission of his high school. Freshmen and sophomores have a minimum ACT score requirement. Ash retook the ACT in June with hopes of scoring high enough to dual enroll, and just made the cut.
    After his acceptance into the program we got a very welcome surprise. We had expected to pay about $400 in tuition to cover Ash's three-hour college course. When he got his acceptance email he also got a notice that all high school students in the Ole Miss dual credit program receive a tuition scholarship. So his cost to take the college course is limited to the price of the textbook.
    We're certainly grateful to Ole Miss for the help. It's not something that the university is required to do. Some states cover the tuition costs of dual enrollment, but Mississippi isn't one of these. There's not a mention of the scholarships at all on the Ole Miss website; perhaps it's something that the university doesn't want to promise in case there aren't enough funds to offer the free tuition every year.
    I frequently post things about trying to figure out ways to finance college. Dual credit/enrollment and Advanced Placement are the best routes to saving money I know of. If Ash takes two courses this year and four courses in subsequent years he'll have 42 dual-enrollment hours when he graduates. Add in six AP course credits and he's looking at the possibility of starting his freshman year with 60 semester hours. That's almost halfway to graduation with no tuition cost; or housing cost, board cost, or fraternity cost.
    Most college-bound students will have a 3.0 average and be eligible for at least two years of dual credit work. Courses can be taken both in the fall and springs as well as in the summer. For students wanting to save on college costs, dual enrollment is a must. In fact, it's a good deal even if you have to pay tuition out of pocket, as there are no housing, food, or other costs typically associated with college enrollment. Much to our surprise we were told that relatively few students take advantage of dual credit each year. Failure to participate in this program is both money and opportunity down the drain. One important note: While you can dual enroll in a junior college, many universities will not accept all junior college hours. So students need to dual enroll in a four-year college to make their hard work worthwhile.
    I took a pretty active role in helping Ash find a suitable course. He's taking Classical Mythology, a course that is harder than it might sound (I think I dropped it years ago when I saw it was going to require work). The professor teaching it is new to Ole Miss, but her student reviews from her prior university were about as glowing as an instructor or student could wish for. Some students described the instructor as one of the hardest they had had, but also as one of the very best. I thought it important for Ash to have a good-quality instructor for his first college course, and if the course is hard then he'll just have to work hard.
    After two class sessions Ash commented that he really liked the college format. It's just more straightforward and down to business, and the students are quieter and more attentive than middle school or high school students.
    Oxford High School records university grades on a 4.5 scale and AP classes on a 5.0 scale. So if Ash should make an "A" in his class it will go down as a 4.5. Ash is still going to take as many AP classes as he can. They get more of a g.p.a. boost, and Oxford reportedly does a good job with them. So Ash will continue to take nearly a full load at Oxford High until he graduates. He's still a member of the Class of '17, but now he's an Ole Miss student, too.

  

National Merit results are on the way

    The College Board has sent semi-finalist notifications to the schools of students who took the PSAT or National Merit Test last October. These letters may arrive today, and many high schools will immediately call the seniors in to the office to tell them the good news.
    Roughly 16,000 seniors across America will be named National Merit Semi-finalists. While the letters should arrive this week, the actual press release date is Sept. 11. Semi-finalists are required to have an SAT score that is in line with their PSAT, have reasonably good grades, a letter of recommendation from their principal, and to complete some paperwork to become Finalists. About 15,000 will go on to Finalist status, with 1,000 not making the cut due to failure to meet the above requirements.
    The College Confidential board has some pretty good information on what is going  on this year with test scores. They tend to fluctuate a little bit, but this year the score for a Commendation is 203 nationwide, the same as last year. Commendations offer little but a warm feeling inside, or perhaps a frustrated feeling in some states, such as Mississippi, where there is only a point or two of difference between being named a Commended Student and a Semi-finalist.
    While Commended status is based on a nationwide score of all students scoring in the top three percent, Semi-finalist cutoff scores vary by state. Last year in Mississippi the Semi-finalist cutoff was 204, so there were very few unlucky Commended students. On the other hand, Massachusetts has a cutoff score of 221, so there is a big gap between the two.
    As I've written before, the difference in cutoff scores means that it is much easier for a diligent student to earn National Merit status living in states like Mississippi, Wyoming, and West Virginia than it is in states like Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Maryland. A score that puts one in the top one percent in Mississippi might only put one in the top two or three percent nationally.
    My opinion is that it is far easier for a student who usually scores in say the 94th percentile to work hard and improve himself to reach the 98th percentile than it is for a student who usually scores in the 98th percentile to work hard and improve himself to the 99.7th national percentile. For the diligent student, there is an advantage to being schooled in Mississippi!
    Here's a test-taking tip. High school freshmen and sophomores are allowed to take the PSAT; only the junior-year score is used for National Merit purposes. If your child has reasonably good test scores, pay the $15 or so for him to take the test. You ought to get an idea from these scores as to whether or not your child has National Merit potential. With a couple of years to work on it, much of the PSAT math can be systematically mastered, and there can be some improvement in the reading and writing as well. A little bit of improvement can go a long way, so it's worth the effort.