Distinguished Young Women is the largest national scholarship program for young women and was founded in 1958. Throughout the years they have given over 118 million dollars in scholarship money to thousands of young women. Recently, Lafayette County held the county wide Distinguished Young Women competition at the Ford Center on the campus of The University of Mississippi.
“Distinguished Young Women is a scholarship program for 11th grade girls. There are local, state and national level competitions,” Ava Randle, junior at Oxford High School and Lafayette County’s Distinguished Young Woman, said. “25 percent of the competition is based on your grades. You also have to do an interview, a talent, a fitness routine, and you have to answer a question on stage. So you have to be pretty well rounded to compete.”
Besides the hours of preparation each girl that is competing must choose a little sister. A little sister must be a tenth grade girl and acts as a personal cheerleader for the competitors.
“I was a little sister for Mary Cile Meagher and it was so much fun getting to support her throughout the competition,” Lotte Luber, sophomore at Oxford High School, said. “It also gave me a sneak peak of what being a part of it was like before deciding if I wanted to compete next year.”
The first step to becoming a part of Distinguished Young Women is simply applying for it. After that is when you move on to the competition process.
“I first found out about it two years ago from a past winner and I knew that I wanted to be a part of it,” Randle said. “I was also a little sister last year and that got me even more excited to be able to compete my junior year. Once I became a junior I just filled out an application on their website, that part wasn’t hard at all.”
Once you are accepted by the Distinguished Young Women organization, you start preparing to compete in a local competition. Lafayette County’s local competition included girls from every school in Lafayette county.
“The directors here are really great,” Randle said. “They helped us do interviews and fitness practices, so that we would feel prepared. I also had to practice my talent a lot, I play the violin, so I had to spend some time working on that.”
Distinguished Young Women’s main idea is to be your best self. DYW believes that includes being ambitious, healthy, responsible, involved, and being studious. These things are proven through each part of the competition as well as the competitors’ grades.
“We did our interview, which was four judges and I in a room,” Randle said. “Then we practiced our fitness routine and our opening number in the Ford Center. We did all of the events. First we did self expression, then talent, fitness, and then they announced the winner.”
Randle was named Lafayette County’s Distinguished Young Woman, besides gaining new experience she also won scholarship money to go towards her future education.
“The benefit to winning is that you get a lot of scholarship money, I think I got about $1,500 in scholarship money which is super helpful for my future,” Randle said.
Overall, Distinguished Young Women is a program that hopes to better every participant for their future. Whether that’s through winning money to pay for college or learning life skills that will help them throughout the rest of their lives. This program has seemed to make a big impact on the young women of Lafayette County.
“A lot of people told me that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by participating and I think that’s definitely true,” Randle said. “I learned a lot from interview practice like how to carry on a conversation and I think that will be helpful in the future for job interviews and rush. It also helped me to form friendships with girls I might not have otherwise.”
