Hi, I’m a high school junior and was just curious if any one had any scholarship ideas for me. My grades are pretty good but nothing good enough to get me a large merit scholarship. I don’t qualify for much financial aid either. However, I have amazing ecs and I really really love volunteering. I have lots of community service hours and I know I could write a good essay. Thank you for all you’re help!
What was your GPA at the end of your sophomore year? You have this year to bring that up as high as you can.
Your high school may have a list of local scholarships. Look for scholarships from local civic groups like American Legion, Elks, local banks or credit unions. Even small ones for $250 can add up.
Does your local community offer many scholarships to seniors? I knew these were our best chance (compared to national ones you find on the internet). At the end of DD’19’s junior year, I took notes on all of the awards given to Class of 2018 seniors so that I could make sure DD applied for all of them. The guidance counselor generally has a list of these for you too.
Beyond that, I also looked online for statewide scholarships, particularly if targeted to DD’s major as that helps winnow out competition. DD’17 won a small national scholarship that I found on Sallie Mae, and she gave it a try because it was for her major and they give out a few hundred (not just one). So those are things we looked for. The generic ones on Niche or Unigo are probably not worth your time.
That said, those types of scholarships are usually one-time payments and not large. So you also want to look for less expensive colleges in which you are in their top percentages stats-wise. I know a lot of colleges in the Midwest at least, have charts for automatic merit based on GPA and test scores.
And once you’re in college, apply for the endowed scholarships every year at your college if they have them. It’s usually a common application for all.
Bottom line is don’t plan on being able to obtain a large renewable outside scholarship. Very rare. But if you need just a little boost, like we did, it’s definitely worth trying local or targeted ones. The one-time scholarships helped get DD’19 through the more expensive freshman year- now she’s saving money by living off campus.
PTA scholarships - local, district, state - often look for students with civic engagement.
This poster is a junior not a senior. She can ask bout local scholarships, but most of those are for HS seniors, not juniors.
Even most of the big national scholarships are for seniors, not juniors.
And lastly @colorado89039 the BEST scholarships come from the colleges where you are accepted. So my suggestion…start researching places where your stats will garner you merit aid.
You don’t mention how much aid you need…so how much aid do you need to attend college?
Also, your instate publics would be a good place to start. If you are from CO as your screenname indicates, look in Montana, Utah, Wyoming, where the costs to attend are much more modest to begin with than in CO.