@colleenmarie, definitely apply for outside scholarships. Each of my 3 kids won multiple 4 year outside merit scholarships (not need based). Look specifically for scholarships for your major and scholarships offered by local organizations and businesses. (You may not want to waste your time on the big national scholarships, but look at the bios of past winners and if you feel you have a chance, definitely go for it. Those are tough to win, though.)
Sometimes there are very few applicants for scholarships. One big non-need based 4 year scholarship where we live covers one part of the state and probably over 100 high schools. They offer two nice 4-year scholarships. Surprisingly, only about 70 kids apply each year! One in 35 is pretty good odds!
I know some posters’ experience is that there aren’t many 4-year merit-based outside scholarships, but that has not been our experience.
Honestly, @colleenmarie, we just started by googling the word scholarship with things that made my kids unique or words that described their interests or whatever. For example, “scholarship red hair”,“scholarship tall” “scholarship scholar athlete” or whatever. We didn’t have much luck getting scholarships that were listed on websites like fastweb, but we got ideas from there on other places to look. Also, lots of high schools/school districts have great lists of local scholarships. Our high school didn’t have the best list, so we looked at the high school websites for other local schools, including exclusive private schools that had great lists of merit-based scholarships, and the websites of top ranked public schools. Another great trick - if your high school lists scholarships students have won, look into those scholarships. Our high school actually lists scholarships each student won in the yearbook, so we pulled older yearbooks and looked into the scholarships other kids won in past years. Sometimes when local newspapers or news websites run an article about a student (like student of the week, or whatever), they will have a short bio and will list scholarships the student won. Great source!) Look at the websites of local women’s groups to see if they offer scholarships to young women. If you live in a rural area, look for scholarships offered by groups in the nearest large town - the local Rotary may offer scholarships to kids from surrounding communities. And don’t forget to keep applying even after you start college! There are lots of scholarships offered to current college students. One of my sons got about $10,000 more after his junior year. Even with all this searching on the internet, I just realized we missed a great one! No idea how it never turned up, but it is one my kids would have had a decent shot at. Darn!
You just have to do lots of searching and weeding out of scholarships if you feel you have no shot at winning. For my first child, well he applied for lots of scholarships. But by my last child, we had learned to look at the bios of past winners to see what types of kids won the scholarship. Sometimes, based on that, my kids wouldn’t even apply. For example, if all the past winners of a particular scholarship had overcome unbelievable hardship, well clearly that’s what the scholarship committee is looking for and my kids won’t win. On the other hand, if the winners’ bios sounded a lot like my kids, then that’s one they would apply for.
The merit scholarships offered by schools that are renewable are the best place to start. Most schools indicate the criteria for these, though sometimes use holistic review, many also give you an idea of amount, though some are vague but give a range. Some will let you stack outside scholarships too, particularly if you don’t qualify for need based aid. For outside scholarships your local and state organizations are good places to look. My own daughter applied to eight schools, not offered admission to two, got into six, all with some merit scholarship, honors college offers at every public, and a full tuition offer at a private. Every merit offer made the respective school affordable out of pocket. She has applied for a number of local scholarships and they are starting to come in. None of the local ones are renewable, but the more cost we reduce year one, the more we have for subsequent years.
You can do this. It would help you a lot though, if your parents could give you a ballpark figure. We told our daughter we would spend 25,000 per year, she was able to work with that, and we will be spending much less. Now we plan to help her with room and board for grad school, because we can now.
It’s only hard for you to be varied if you don’t want to be varied. If all you want to apply to is elite and/or unaffordable universities…fine. Then do that.
But it would certainly be orient of you…since you claim you want to help with finances, to open your mind to options where you will get merit aid, or where the prices are affordable.
You came here asking for financial advice. If you really don’t need financial assistance, or want to look at options that will lighten the financial load…fine.
But really, the best scholarships come directly from college.
Many many outside scholarships have a need component.
I’m not sure WHY it would be hard to apply to a well varied list of colleges…unless you just don’t want to.
@NorthernMom61, would you care to share your hunting/sorting/triage/application process for outside scholarships? They can be overwhelming. I would like to help my child in the hunt and organization/mechanics of the process, but would love a template of a process to start from!
We started by using Cappex and Fastweb those types of sites, but they weren’t terribly helpful as a lot of them were national, super competitive and had a need component. She did make it to semi-finalist in Coca-Cola, but got bumped in the last cut. Most of our local scholarship notices came in the spring and were posted as attachements to the biweekly newsletter that her high school put out, or posted on the counselor’s page on the school website. They were limited in number, but she got six of the eight that she applied for and it added up to 5500.00 which helped a lot. Almost all of them required essay writing and I can say that by the end of senior year she was pretty tired of writing them.
“Our high school didn’t have the best list, so we looked at the high school websites for other local schools, including exclusive private schools that had great lists of merit-based scholarships, and the websites of top ranked public schools.”
I have found this strategy to be entirely enlightening, sometimes simply for the wonderful way in which other schools have organized and displayed information.
