Hey everyone,
Just wanted to know, are $500 essay contests really worth the work?
I’m in the every penny counts camp.
Where else can you earn $500 by writing an essay and completing an application form?
I really doubt you are so eternally busy that you can’t write a short essay for a chance to win half a grand, haha.
As someone who won a handful of those, I’d say yes.
Yes. My daughter earned a number of small local community scholarships as a senior in high school. Two hundred here, five hundred there, a thousand here. All involved some sort of essay. In the end it added up to about 6500 dollars, and since her school allowed stacking, half of her room and board was covered freshman year. One or two of these took very little of her time, and she even recycled one essay.
I am in the “it depends” camp. Some are clearly worthwhile for excellent writers. They are not a productive use of time for the D+/C- student. I had the privilege of reading some essays for a local charity sponsored $500 scholarship, and I was surprised at the poor quality of some of the entrants.
For our small organization, we had 3 judges, and we each read all 44 submitted essays. We had to pick what we thought were the top 5 finalists, then we got together and each re-read the 9 that were on multiple lists, and ranked them. We were fortunate, that year it was easy to pick the winner as it was unanimous. But we had considerable discussion about the $100 second prize. I came away from that experience wondering about the 42 kids who spent (at least most of them) time and effort, to come away with nothing.
It depends. If writing essays keeps you away from your busy schedule of hanging out with your friends and posting selfies on Instagram then yes- it’s worth it. If writing essays means you can’t take extra hours at work, or prevents you from some other meaningful activity then maybe it’s worth it and maybe it’s not.
If you can fully invest yourself in writing a good essay and have qualifications they are looking for - yes. For whatever reason my DD was able to win few larger scholarships, but did not succeed in a smaller ones.
I think that it is totally worth it!
Even if you do not win a lot of them, every amount counts. Just think of it- if you are a few thousand away from paying off a bill, winning $500 is a big chunk out of the payment. I apply for multiple small scholarships, as they are a bit easier to win than the bigger ones and are guaranteed money towards your bills!
How awesome is that?
Totally depends on the policy of the university you are intending to go to and what impact that $500 will have on the financial aid package they award you. Some schools may use it to reduce loans, or work study, while others will take away $500 of a grant.
My son won a $500 scholarship from the American Legion. It took him 20 minutes to take their on-line test. Definitely worth it–bought his books one quarter.
You could also enter an American Legion essay contest, or Poetry Out Loud.
It depends. If it’s a local scholarship that doesn’t have a ton of applicants, then I’d say it’s worth it. If it’s something you found on FastWeb or a similar site where there will be many people applying and the odds of winning are extremely slim, then I’d say your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
I guess what I want is a scholarship with little applicants (Lol I know its hard). To me, applying to a $50 scholarship is better than to a $5000 if the $50 has less applicants. I’d rather get minimal reward than risk getting nothing. Does anybody know a few scholarships with little applicants? My essays are fine, but it’s the research that I have to do that scares me.
I’m my opinion, your best bet is local scholarships. My kids got awards from their elementary school PTO, teachers association at their elementary school, a local church, their HS band…places where the folks wanted to award to students from the community.
Each got about $4000 in awards…yes for freshman year only…but every penny counts.
BTW it is “few applicants” and “fewer applicants”
no
@mommdc Thanks for the correction.
@CourtneyThurston says…no. But the $4000 in small,scholarships my kids earned paid for a lot of books and other smaller expenses. They essays and interviews they did for these were TOTALLY worth it.
^ Yup. I earned several thousand dollars from small ones like this which allowed me to reduce my loans freshman year.
Every little bit counts… but not if it’s going to cut into a job or something.