For those of you who are hopelessly fighting to receive government grants or University scholarships, it isn't too late to search for smaller scholarships on your own. Trust me, they add up quickly. Here are a couple of steps to take if you aren't ready to give up on getting college scholarships.
1. There are some really great FREE websites out there that can help you find scholarships based on your academics, individual achievements, artwork, composition skills, family heritage, or community service and involvement. To name a few, www.collegeboard.com and especially www.fastweb.com have really come in handy. This way you can search for scholarships that you are actually eligible to apply for and might have an interest in completing the requirements. What's great about these sites is that they list some scholarhips that are even available AFTER you start college. You can continue applying for financial aid well into your college career!
2. Essays are not as long and hard as they seem. I know many students from my high school that I never in a million years would have expected to win a scholarship from an essay contest, but many of them have. Take the time to write one of those 500 word essays. You'll find that it's not hard to accumulate that many words on a page if you just start to type.
3. Have another person look over your essays or applications. They may be able to catch a mistake that you didn't notice. That one mistake could be the difference between receiving the scholarship and having the scholarship committe chuck your application in the discard pile.
4. Lastly, don't put off applying to a scholarhip until the last minute, especially if it requires mailing information. Applications, essays, questionaires, etc. need to be mailed BEFORE the due date. The scholarship committees expect to RECEIVE the application on the specified date. Many times, having the envelope postmarked on that date just won't cut it.
I hope that these few, but effective, ideas will help you in your search for scholarships over the summer!
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What are the odds of winning this scholarship? It doesnt seem there are very many users when im online but i still cant picture me winning a scholarship that isnt something local.
That's a really great question. The odds of winning scholarships aren't as bad as you may think. I, for instance, use fastweb almost everyday to filter out scholarships that I don't want to apply for and star those that I want to look at again. I wish I could give a personal account of winning some of the scholarships I found on fastweb, but most of my applications were semi-recent and I shouldn't expect to hear back from them for another few weeks. I do, however, know many friends who have used these online searches and have been successful. One of my friends, who put time and honest effort into three applications, received $1000 on one of them. Now, if you think about the time she spent on those three scholarships (probably 8 hours total for the essays etc.), I think it's well worth the effort she put it to earn that $1000. That's like getting paid $125 an hour! Defeating the odds means going above the average application. What will make you stand out to the scholarship committee? That is the key to putting the odds in your favor. I hope that helps!
I agree. I think that anyone can win them if they invest the time and effort needed to convince the committees that they are the most deserving recipient.
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Very good advice. I was going to post a blog like this but it looks like you already covered it...and very well at that.