Do you have rare achievements in World of Warcraft? This could really pay off. At least in the USA, scholarships at the university are being offered for this.
Twenty years ago, it was a bit of a joke among gamers that at some point, achievements in video games could actually be used for something in real life. It’s not so funny anymore, because many former raid leaders from professional guilds in WoW mention this in their applications. Now there is even a university that awards scholarships if you have quite rare achievements in games like World of Warcraft.
Which university is doing this? We are talking about the University of Silicon Valley (USV). They have just introduced their “Max Achievement Scholarship” program on their website – a program that awards scholarships to gamers who have achieved notable successes in video games.
How much is the scholarship? The scholarship varies in amount depending on the category – as the achievements and associated scholarships are classified into two categories:
- Masters Tier: up to $15,000 per year.
- Legendary Tier: up to $7,500 per year.
Long quests can lead to scholarships in WoW
What achievements are being asked for? The university is looking for various achievements from different games that must be met to apply for the scholarship. For World of Warcraft, this includes:
- Master of Teachings: Completed all story quests in all zones.
- Maxed out all 13 professions.
- Achieved exalted status with 25 or more reputation factions.
Other games are also listed with various achievements, such as Final Fantasy XIV or Guild Wars 2, as you can see here:
Fans of solo games can also try their luck if they have, for example, completed all prophecies in Hades or fully mastered the map and all shrines in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
What are the achievements supposed to prove? Achieving these accomplishments is said to demonstrate that one has shown special perseverance, systemic thinking, or creative problem-solving approaches, even in digital worlds, according to the university. These are the cognitive skills that drive innovation, among other things. The scholarships are only available for US citizens who have achieved these accomplishments – but perhaps European universities will take this as an example, especially to adopt ambitious achievements in the gaming sector as a criterion.
What do you think of this type of scholarship? Is it a cool way to engage the younger generation and reward their achievements? Or is it just embarrassing that such a thing is used by a university?
Cortyn says: In a time when people are increasingly hearing that attention spans are decreasing, I can well imagine that the ability to pursue specific goals with persistent ambition is a good indicator of a person’s potential abilities. That making passions from outside the educational sphere – namely gaming – a criterion is quite clever. Of course, this is only about a handful of scholarships, which will surely be highly contested. But that something like this even exists is a good first step.
We have presented the 5 hardest achievements in World of Warcraft here.
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