5 Tips for Parents- Tip 3- Put Proper Time Into Researching Additional Scholarships

So tip number three really hits home for me because I spent no time doing this and I’m wondering if there was opportunities I missed. So tip number three is put the proper time into research for additional scholarships above and beyond the obvious ones that are presented to you up front.

So when we go into scholarships, there are multiple types. So the first is a merit -based scholarship. So that is usually an automatic consideration based on a student’s grades and test scores. Resume, activities, all the factors going into their application.

That is kind of the first point of where the scholarship here set. Then we start to explore other additional competitive scholarships. So within the department of the school that they’re going to. So if they are majoring in pre -med or biology, are there science scholarships available?

Are there honors college opportunities available? Are there fellowship opportunities available? Those are usually additional applications, additional essays, but money is usually associated with acceptance. Going away from the schools now.

So what I first encourage people to do is maximize whatever scholarships are available at each university. Then bring your scholarship search to your local level. So what scholarships are available through your school district, through your local chamber of commerce, through your town, banks, Elks Lodge, Sons of Italy, any organization locally, see what they offer.

A lot of parent employers also offer scholarships depending on employee eligibility. So it’s always smart to look or at least explore does your employer or does your company offer any scholarships? And then starting to slowly branch out.

John, that’s incredibly interesting. I remember when I was in school, all I got was the scholarships that were initially given to me and then one became available in my sophomore year based upon my GPA being above like a 3 .2 or something that I had to apply for as well.

But if that wasn’t directly emailed to me, I wouldn’t have applied for it. I still considered not even applying for it because I thought, you know, what are the chances? So I’m curious, out of the kids, you do convince to put in a little bit of extra work to apply for scholarships outside of the, you know, the regular offers from the universities.

What percentage success rate do you see out of just those that actually put in the work to apply for additional scholarships? For the students that are putting in the time and the effort that are actually applying for the outside scholarships, I’m usually seeing about a 40% success rate or a 40% rate of earning one of those scholarships.

The amounts vary. I mean, it could be, you know, $250 to $2 ,500, but every little bit adds up, you know, some it’s going towards tuition, others it’s going for books and spending money. That’s incredible.

I can say one thing that surprised me about college is how much writing I had to do. I know these scholarships probably require some essays, but if I were to go back and do it myself, I would have applied for probably 50 at least scholarships.

So I can tell you it was such a pain in the butt to steal a school loans coming out of college and trying to find a job and making job decisions that maybe not work where I wanted to, but really cause I had to work there to pay off these loans.

If the students are smart about which essays they’re selecting because a lot of the scholarship essays are all pretty standard. It is why are you worthy of this scholarship? Why should you be chosen? Or what is the most impactful thing you’ve done to your community?

So when the essays are pretty standard or the prompts are pretty standard, the kids can do a lot of recycling. So as long as they write it specific to the scholarship but also general enough to recycle, it tends to take a lot of work away from them too.

Cause once the essay is written, we can just kind of pick and choose where it applies.