"I Think of the Admission Process as a Song and Dance" - An Interview with The Scholar's Jaye Pace

RealityNewsOnline: Hello Jaye, thanks for agreeing to this interview.

Jaye: Thanks for having me here. This is exciting!

RNO: First question for you, who developed the idea for The Scholar?

Jaye: Well, I suppose if you want the unabridged version of that answer, it all started back when I was working as an admissions officer at Columbia. I wanted to get the message out to high school students, particularly public school students, that attending college was a financial and academic possibility.

RNO: So the idea began with you?

Jaye: Yes, I came up with an idea to follow the admission process through a documentary type show, but I was one year out of college and didn't really know how to get something like that made. So, I wrote the next best thing... a musical (because I had a background in musical theater, and I think of the admission process as a song and dance). That didn't get me much further, so I decided to write a screenplay called Acceptance.

By that time I had moved out to Los Angeles and was pursuing a career in the entertainment industry. I had a chance encounter with Elizabeth Williams (one of the producers on The Scholar). After reading the synopsis for Acceptance, she suggested that we make a reality show that deals with students trying to get into college.

It was the most serendipitous meeting, and after that I contacted my friend Shannon Meairs who was at that time working as an assistant director of admission at Pepperdine and asked her if she'd be interested in working on an admission reality show. The funny thing was about a month prior to me contacting her she had already conceived of a similar idea. So we all joined forces and put together a pitch that we could take to the networks.

RNO: Wow! From musical to reality show, huh? I can just imagine Simon Cowell telling prospective students, "your grades are abysmal! You are the worst student I've ever seen!"

Jaye: Hahaha... yes, as they tap dance out calculus equations!

RNO: So was ABC the first network you contacted?

Jaye: Actually, before we event went to the networks Elizabeth introduced us to Joan Stein who happens to be Steve Martin's producing partner. We pitched the show to her, and at the time she had a production deal with Carsey Werner, so then we had to pitch the show to Carsey Werner, and once they signed off we started pitching to networks. We had almost simultaneous meetings with NBC and ABC, but NBC was already doing a similarly themed college show that you may have heard about: Tommy Lee Goes to College.

RNO: Ah, I was wondering how so many production companies got involved. What about the sponsors? How did you go about securing the scholarship from the Broad Foundation?

Jaye: Yes, we have quite a long list of producers... all who bring a certain expertise to the table which was great. ABC and Bunim-Murray worked to get all our sponsors involved. I think everyone's sentiment was that they were so excited to be part of such an honorable endeavor. I mean, if I had extra money to throw around, I'd definitely want to send as many kids to college as I could! Joan Stein helped us get the support of the Broad Foundation, and that again seemed to be a natural fit given the Broad Foundation's existing involvement in bettering education.

RNO: When was the show filmed? It would seem like the schedule might conflict with their senior years in high school.

Jaye: That was definitely one of the things we were considering as we went into production. Having worked in education, I didn't want to take seniors out of school for an extended amount of time, especially in the first part of their senior year. So we ended up filming for two weeks at the end of January/beginning of February. This worked great because all of our Scholars had turned in their college applications and we could also get our admission officers to take those weeks off from work since that is typically reading season.

Also, one of the things that was really important to Shannon and me was that we gave all of our semifinalists real college admission counseling since that was sort of our battlecry for the show. So shooting in mid-winter enabled us to sit down with each of our 120 semifinalists and really walk them through the college application process and give them advice that they most likely weren't otherwise receiving. It made the whole process very personal and so much more than just another reality show.

RNO: How inspiring! So what criteria were used to choose the scholars for the show?

Jaye: If you remember Jeremy from the show... he was one of my students, and when I first met with him he was only applying to California schools. This was mostly due to the fact that he didn't think he would get enough financial aid from Harvard or Stanford, but I encouraged him to apply, helped him with his essays, and eventually he was admitted to Stanford, Yale, and Harvard which he is ultimately attending.

We used a hybrid application of sorts. Since we were looking for interesting television personalities, we used part of the "Real World" app and then to cover our academic and financial criteria we used a modified version of the Columbia application...

We were looking for students who 1) needed money to attend their top university 2) had made the most of the academic and social opportunities afforded them in high school 3) and who we felt had the potential to create the greatest impact in their school and community if chosen to be The Scholar.

RNO: Jeremy was one of my favorites from the beginning. What about the others? Did you try to fill certain stereotypes/characters in addition to the academic requirements, or was that not an issue?

Jaye: Sure... I think we wanted our audience to be able to identify with at least one student on the show so we tried to find students who represented different perspectives, strengths, interests, weaknesses, etc.