A Prestigious Tradition

Over the past 25 years, the Michaels-Dickson Scholarship Program has been instrumental in attracting exceptional boarding and day students to McCallie. This merit scholarship program was created in 1998 and named for Ed Michaels '60 and Alan Dickson '49 who were instrumental in its founding.

McCallie's merit scholarship program was inspired by the collegiate-level Morehead-Cain (University of North Carolina), Jefferson Scholarship (University of Virginia), and the A.B. Duke Scholarship programs. 

At McCallie full and partial scholarships are made possible through a special endowment established to fund the scholarship program in perpetuity. Among the donors to this fund are men who know first hand the life-changing value of this program because they attended McCallie as a Michaels-Dickson Scholar.

Becoming a Michaels-Dickson is a highly competitive process. In recent years, the notoriety of this program has increased which has made the pool of candidates both larger and stronger. Winners of the merit scholarship are young men who have proven themselves to be outstanding in multiple ways. 

They must demonstrate to the selection committee strength of character, leadership potential, and academic excellence in the classroom and on nationally-normed standardized tests.Scholarship winners typically rank in the top ten percent of their class, maintain a grade point average at or above 3.5, and score in the top fifteen percent of independent school norms on the SSAT. All boys who are competing for a scholarships are required to attend the Michaels-Dickson Scholarship Weekend during which they tour campus, complete an admission interview,  and meet with current McCallie students, faculty, and staff.