How to Get Scholarships for College

The Importance of Scholarships

Scholarships in a Nutshell 🤔

• "Scholarships are financial aid awards designed to help students pay for an undergraduate degree" (Cappex).
• "A scholarship is financial support awarded to a student, based on academic achievement or other criteria that may include financial need, for the purpose of schooling" (University of South Alabama).
• "Most scholarships are [...] awarded to students with certain qualities, such as proven academic or athletic ability. Many scholarships have rules that you have to follow to continue receiving aid" (College Board).

Types of Scholarships ⭐

• Ethnicity-specific scholarships: Banatao Filipino American Scholarship, Generation Google Scholarship, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, etc. 
• Grade level-specific scholarships: Is it for high school seniors only or is it for 9th to 12th graders? You'll definitely have higher chances of winning contests with only high school seniors vs. those with all high school levels!
• Major-specific scholarships: Only accepts applications from aspiring college students of specific majors/industries (i.e marine biology, chemistry, agriculture, healthcare, etc.)

1. Apply for scholarships that ask for monetary payment! Think about it: you're applying to earn money for college, not spend it even before you get the award!
2. Rely on luck with the raffle scholarships! It's easy to fall down the rabbit hole of applying to raffle scholarships. After all, they only take three to five minutes of your time! The thing is: raffles typically occur once a month and you could've spent your time refining your application to snag more scholarships using your phenomenal talent instead of idly waiting to win the lottery.
3. Give away your personal information to shady texters/emailers! In my three years of scholarship application experience, I've never had a "sponsor" email me about my credit card information or social security number. Needless to say, don't do it!
4. Hesitate to ask questions to your guidance counselor. If you think a scholarship is "sketchy" or if you have other questions that the scholarship organization does not explicitly elaborate on their website, ask for help! Your guidance counselors have seen a lot of both authentic and suspicious scholarships throughout their career. It surely doesn't hurt to ask for a second (or third) opinion! 

Tips and Tricks on Snagging that Next Scholarship 🎁

1. Document your statistics on a piece of paper or word document. Take note of your top activities, extracurricular activities, job experience, awards, test scores, GPA, and other statistics somewhere so that you have a convenient place to go when inputting them in the first few parts of your scholarship application! That way, you don't have to rethink your list and worry that you'll miss an activity/statistic or two for each scholarship you apply to.
2. Look at the scholarship rubric! If the scholarship you're applying to is part of an essay contest, look at how they weigh individual components of your work. Do they care more about grammar and spelling? Clarity? Length? Another scholarship might value your volunteer experience more than work experience. Be sure to check out their organization’s mission/values!
3. Make a list of scholarships you can apply to in the future. Found a scholarship for 12th graders as a 9th grader? Saw another one that opens applications in October on an August evening? Lucky for you, we have a guide detailing how to create the optimal scholarship list. Check it out!
4. Read profiles and/or essays of previous scholarship winners! Sometimes, sponsors are so impressed with someone's application that they publish it on their main webpage! Don't miss out on them and take advantage of the access you are given. What's their writing style like? What clubs are they part of? How did they respond to the given prompt? These are excellent points to consider when slightly catering your application to the sponsors while retaining your personal voice.
5. Ask recommenders AHEAD of time. Two to four weeks before the scholarship deadline? ✔️. A night before the scholarship deadline? ❌. Recommenders are humans, too! Similar to how you tend to produce crummy work when you procrastinate on an assignment or paper, the quality of your recommendations depends on the amount of thought the recommenders put on them.
6. Write drafts on word documents and/or sheets of paper first. You'd be surprised how many high schoolers nationwide cry inside when the page with the essay they typed directly on the scholarship application accidentally refreshes or closes. Don't be in that situation! (Trust me, I've been there.)
7. Reuse scholarship essays. Oftentimes, scholarships have similar prompts but with different wordings. For example, you might have a similar answer to both "what is your greatest achievement?" and "what are you most proud of?" Save yourself a lot of time and brainpower by reusing essays from other scholarships. There's virtually nothing holding you back!
8. Build a relationship with your mentor figures! This isn't limited to just for scholarship reasons, but having a really close relationship with your mentors will definitely pay off when they write you a recommendation. They'll surely have a lot of cool things to say about you! Plus, you're enhancing your social skills in preparation for college and the real world when you interact with a loooooot more people.
9. Consider to what extent your scholarship will help you. This usually applies to students who receive a full ride based on need-based aid. Should you earn scholarships outside of the school that gave you that full ride, the school will deduct the grant they provide using the scholarship money sent directly to them. Not that it'll hurt, but it won't help you either as you won't get to put the money in your pockets… unless the scholarship goes directly to your pockets.
10. BE YOURSELF! The most genuine scholarship applications shine brilliantly in the pile of… well, other scholarship applications. That's because they ooze with passion and authenticity, both being very desirable qualities! Just because the scholarship is about community service DOES NOT mean you should fabricate stories of your "contributions" to a fictional service event. Be honest and reflective when finding the moments and experiences in your life that you'll share to the scholarship/judging committee!

Wrapping Up 🙌

GIF Courtesy of GIFER.com