I am in the midst of applying to scholarships, but I am finding it very difficult to determine which sites are legit. Does anyone have any experience with certain websites (and actually winning scholarships on those websites)? Also I am wondering how much money in scholarships the average student makes. Let me know if you have had an experience with winning scholarships and how much you were able to earn/where you applied. Thank you so much in advance.
Look for your local community foundation. In bigger cities they are often named after the city and in less populated areas they are often named after the county. These are non-profits that manage local grants and scholarships. The kind of place that a memorial scholarship would be set up in remembrance of a community member. These are non-profits that streamline the application, selection and disbursement of funds to the colleges for outside scholarships. Just google your city or county name + foundation + scholarship The funds are usually limited to recipients in the local area, so your chances are good you can get something.
Our experience with outside scholarships with two kids was thus - do not bank your college application choices on receiving them. Do not waste hundreds of dollars on application fees to colleges you will only be able to afford if you win outside scholarships. Apply for your favorite long shot school, sure. Spend $100 a piece on 10 “I hope I can” applications? No. Use that money to apply to schools where you are a “big fish” who will draw big fish merit money! Get in the honors program, do research, stand out, make the most of it and come out with little debt holding you down for the rest of your life!
My foster son won the incredible Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2015. This scholarship had 57,000 applicants and 1,000 winners. He didn’t know he had won until early April. He had some waivers on application fees, but you won’t have that. In spite of the limited waivers he had, he applied only to schools he could afford (with merit aid and Pell grant money), without winning any additional money.
Winning these outside scholarships is hard. There are no easy, non-competitive scholarships. The belief that there are “easy scholarships” is a myth.
My family is incredibly organized, we researched for a solid summer, found many legitimate scholarships. My daughter made it into a personal project and learned a heck of a lot from it (I pointed her in a general direction and let her go.) She made it her “job” and applied to many, hitting all deadlines. She is middle class, white female. She had above average SATs, all 4/5 scores on AP exams, above average GPA, leadership, volunteerism etc. Excellent essays, phenomenal recommendations. She won $8,000 in outside scholarships. That’s all. Not really a drop in the bucket if she had selected only 60,000 a year schools.
She applied for 100 scholarships, made it to semi and quarter finalist rounds in some of the better known ones. We would get knocked out as the competition stiffened and as things like financial need kicked in (no doubt sky high test scores would help, as would a lower income)
Her real savings came from selecting an in state public college that granted substantial merit aid ($11,500 a year), and also accepted her AP classes for college credit. She just moved in for her junior year, has a 3.9 GPA and will graduate with zero debt, as will my foster son. They are both in the honors program, work on campus in their major fields, do research etc. Very positive experiences for both of them.
It is possible to come out with low debt, but often it means adjusting your expectations at this early application stage. Look for the schools where you are the big fish - great schools are out there that are affordable to you but do not have the name Harvard/Princeton/Yale etc. I’ve read college confidential for 3 or 4 years now, lots of knowledge to be gained, but you have to be willing to open your eyes and change your mind to gain from it.
Best of luck and good job starting this conversation now!
Another thing to think about is that some schools let you bring in outside scholarships that will reduce your net price. But some schools will reduce institutional aid by any amount of outside scholarships brought in. My D was offered full tuition at one school, but the outside scholarships she knew she had won would in essence go to the school. While the school she chose allowed her to use the outside scholarships to pay the tuition amount due after the school’s merit aid making them essentially the same price the first year.
Some scholarships are renewable (so you get them every year as long as you are taking classes and getting a minimum gpa) and others were not. Since she chose the school that let her benefit from the outside scholarships, she would reapply every year with the local foundation. The most she got in outside scholarships totaled around $3,000 her first year and her last year was about $600 if I remember correctly. I think some of the bigger awards her classmates received were about $10k but those were divided over 4 years so $2,500/year.
Our newspaper lists the community foundation scholarship recipients. Maybe a search of your local paper’s archives could help you figure out what community scholarships exist and what the amounts are?
Also, in most cases…outside scholarships will not reduce your family contribution…they will reduce any need based aid you receive from the college.
Some schools do allow stacking of aid from all sources…but most don’t.