<p>I'm a high school senior, and my parents keep urging me to apply for scholarships. I'm all for applying for scholarships, but I don't want to waste my time. I've found several local scholarships offered by my city's chamber of commerce and other local institutions, but I've also found scholarships available to people on a national scale.</p>
<p>My parents get upset with me when I tell them that it's a waste of time to apply to national essay scholarships, because I don't think I even have a chance of winning. For example, here is an example of one of the ones they are urging me to apply for. It's a $1,000 scholarship, but there's only one winner and it's open to a huge applicant pool. <a href="http://www.centurylinkquote.com/scholarship">http://www.centurylinkquote.com/scholarship</a></p>
<p>It's not that I'm lazy, but I just don't think I'll be able to win any of these national scholarships, so I don't want to waste my time trying. I've heard so many teachers say "most scholarships have almost no competition" but I seriously can't fathom that that is the case. Even if only 100 people apply, that gives me a 1% chance of winning. I have better chances of being accepted to Harvard.</p>
<p>Am I crazy here, or should I be spending my time looking for financial opportunities that are a bit more guaranteed?</p>
<p>I agree with you in that the hierarchy of financial aid opportunities, those tiny scholarships that you have to compete for with everyone in the country should be at the bottom of your priority list. It’s not that you can’t win them, it’s just that they are basically a time-consuming lottery ticket. </p>
<p>Most people who get good scholarship aid to pay for college get scholarships directly from the schools themselves (ie schools that offer ‘merit aid’, aid that’s based on your SAT scores, your GPA, or some other measurement of academic excellence – a good example is a school that gives you a full ride or full tuition for being a National Merit Scholar). </p>
<p>The next step down from that would be the local scholarships that you talk about, which are more winnable simply because you don’t have to compete with everyone in their world. </p>
<p>Only if you have time left to kill after searching for merit aid opportunities and local scholarships would I spend any time on places like Fastweb or Cappex. I don’t want to bash on those sites too hard, but the whole “millions of scholarships go unclaimed” thing is an old urban legend/myth concocted by people who combined employer tuition assistance programs, departmental grants at specific colleges, and other obviously limited sources of funding together to make it sound as if there’s a huge pot of money for anyone to go to any college for free out there. The biggest mistake you can make is ignoring potential merit aid opportunities and relying too heavily on the (usually fruitless) hope of somehow being able to cobble together enough $1000 scholarships for being left-handed to pay for 4 years of college.</p>
<p>The best scholarships are the ones offered by universities themselves. Small,non-renewable scholarships are only a drop in the bucket of total college costs. Institutional scholarships are typically renewable for all 4 yrs if requirements are maintained (full-time enrollment and GPA, for example.) </p>
<p>It is getting late in the application season, but top students can get large amts of merit money if they are willing to apply to schools that are actively woo-ing top students. </p>