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Personal finance
Course: Personal finance > Unit 9
Lesson 3: Grants and scholarships- Information about athletic scholarships
- Types of grants and scholarships
- Searching for scholarships
- Student story: Searching for scholarships
- Student story: Applying for scholarships
- Student story: Relying on scholarships when facing immigration challenges
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Searching for scholarships
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- What are some scholarships that non seniors can apply to?(7 votes)
- Rather than piling hours into trying to find scholarships you may qualify for, or have a good chance of receiving; are there companies which specializes in finding and matching students with scholarships?(6 votes)
- At what age is it the best time to apply for scholarships?
What is the best scholarship search engine?
Where is the best place to look for scholarships?
Is there set number of scholarships I should apply to so I can set goals to applying to more scholarships?
Is there a way to figure out how likely I am to win scholarships?
What is the difference between scholarshing and grants or are they the same?
How much time should I set aside to look for scholarships during college?
Should I focus more on scholarships found online or scholarships that are local, school, and college based?
On average how much do scholarships cover for college tuition?(2 votes)- The best time to apply for scholarships is whenever you're eligible for them. There are some that even kids in grade school can get, so apply early and apply often, if you can.
Honestly, I find it the most helpful to use multiple scholarship search engines to find the ones I like the best. Some personal favorites (not an ad) are Fastweb, Scholarships.com, and GoingMerry. You might want to look at a few and see which you prefer.
You can use any scholarship search engines or regular search engines. Your school's guidance office or equivalent might also be able to help you.
Really the number of scholarships you do is a personal decision and balancing act.
Generally, the fewer people who qualify for a scholarship, the more likely you are to win it. Other than applying to more "niche" scholarships, good applications are probably the only way to know that. I know some search services have a rating of how competitive scholarships are, too.
Scholarships and grants are both free money, though grants are more likely to be need-based instead of more merit-based affairs.
Again, deciding how much time you'll use to look for scholarships will involve a lot of personal factors.
Local, school, and college-based scholarships will have a lot fewer people applying to them, so they will probably be worth more of your time and effort.
It's hard to say this kind of average, as it really depends on the scholarship. There are some that offer full rides or like $100k, but others might be for "only" $250. For merit scholarships at individual colleges, you can just look up their criteria (if provided) and amounts to compare with their tuition amounts. Also, less competitive schools will probably give you proportionally more money.
I hope this helped a bit!(4 votes)
- Can you get a scholarship for doing chess?(2 votes)
- I wouldn't think that you'd get a scholarship for doing chess. However, if you search for RaiseMe, there are many opportunities for scholarships on that site that colleges are willing to give you.(2 votes)
- research online bro is the good way to find scholarships. i hope you find one from high school(2 votes)
- Are there any scholarships for multiples? I've heard that there are some out there, but I can't find them.(2 votes)
- Can you "apply" or better put, be apart of, the khan academy SAT prep scholarship as a sophomore?(2 votes)
Video transcript
- Scholarships are a source of free money that students can use
to help pay for college. So, obviously this is a great thing. And students can start
looking for scholarships throughout their high school career. Most scholarships are
available for students when they become seniors in high school, and then scholarships are available to students when they're
in college as well. So scholarships are something that you should constantly
be on the lookout for, and something that you
will need to apply to. It might include filling out forms. It might mean writing essays. It might mean getting
recommendation letters or submitting transcripts. Some of them are online. Some of them are paper applications. Your school might actually
announce different scholarships through their newsletter
or on their website, and so, it's something
that you might need to be on the lookout for, you might
have to pursue on your own. - I literally applied to
every single scholarship I could ever think of. I googled every Armenian scholarship because I'm an Armenian descent, but I'm also from Lebanon, so I googled Lebanese scholarships, and the more I realized
that the more specific you get on the scholarships end, the more likely you are to get it because not everyone applies
to those scholarships, and I was really fortunate enough that I almost received every
single scholarship I applied to because they were so
specific to who I was, where I was from, and what
I was going to be pursuing, and that saved me. - There's a number of
scholarships out there, and sometimes it can be hard to figure out which ones you should apply to. I always encourage my students to apply to the local scholarships, so you should apply to
the local scholarships. Those are the ones that might be limited to students in your school district, or to a certain number of high schools, or a certain region, and so you will have fewer students competing for those scholarships. So you might have a better shot of getting some of those scholarships. - Another great opportunity might be essay contests for scholarship dollars. They typically, again,
require you to write some form of an essay, maybe anywhere from a page to five pages. Maybe also submit teacher recommendations, your SAT scores, even your transcripts. So, that extra amount of work sometimes deters students from doing that so if you're willing to
put in that extra work, you'd be surprised to see how many extra scholarship dollars
you may be able to get. - Some students go into
the scholarship process thinking that scholarships are only for the students with the highest GPA or the highest test scores, and that's absolutely not true. Scholarships are for everyone, everyone who's willing to put in the work in order to apply for those scholarships.