"Scholarship System" Thoughts?

Paying for College
1

Greetings all

I was looking online for scholarships during quarantine when I came across this website called “The Scholarship System.” They had a webinar starting within 15 minutes of my discovery of the website so I attended and it was about how the founder earned up to $100,000 in scholarships and graduated debt-free. What makes her unique at least to me is that she only earned about maybe $2000 before going to college, but thanks to her “system” which she offers to teach you, her scholarship money increased year after year in college.

Her testimonials were impressive but unfortunately, I don’t have the money to go through her program :neutral: which she claims can teach you how to get scholarships even if you’re not the prototypical 4.0 GPA, 10 extracurricular, 3 sport kid. So, in essence, I’m asking

  1. Has anyone been through/heard of this program? Thoughts? Comments?
  2. Does someone have a successful “system” that has worked for them in terms of winning scholarships?
  3. How exactly do you get scholarships from colleges while attending? Is this at every school? How frequent are they and what do you have to do get them?
  4. General tips and Scholarships anyone (and in my case a rising senior) should target.

Thank you in advance for replies I know its a lot :smiley:

2

  1. No, I haven’t heard of this before. I looked it up, and evidently she reports that she made hunting for money her primary activity when not in class. She had scholarship money for the first two years of school, and worked to be sure she continued to have money for the rest of her education. It also appears that what she is selling is a system for keeping track of all of the due dates, etc. for the scholarship applications. Her book is available through Amazon, and might even be at your own public library.

  2. I don’t think there is a magical system that will help a student win scholarships. The best way to guarantee merit-based aid is to have good grades and ACT/SAT test scores.

  3. A fair number of colleges and universities do have merit-based scholarships that are awarded to students after their first year. Often these are awarded by an individual department. My daughter received one her senior year from her major department. I think it was for about $600 and helped pay for her books. If you look at the scholarship information at a given college/university website, you can probably find out about all of those scholarships and learn what the requirements are. My daughter didn’t have to do anything. She was nominated by her department and it was a total surprise to her.

  4. What are your child’s GPA, ACT/SAT scores, interests, and intended major? How much can your family pay for your child’s education each year? Have you run any of the Net Price Calculators at the websites of places your child is interested in, and if so are those places within your budget? What state do you live in?

3

What is the cost to go through the program? I didn’t see a cost on the website, but there was a webinar about to begin…

4

Please, please do not pay for any program that says it will get you scholarships. Think about this. If you are looking for free money to attend college, do you really think you should be spending money to get it?

You live in North Carolina. I would strongly suggest that you look at your instate public universities. They are really quite a great deal for instate students. If your SAT or ACT and your GPA are strong enough, you might even garner merit aid from on of your instate NC public universities.

The best scholarships are the ones awarded to you by the colleges to which you get accepted.

Again…I would suggest staying away from anything that you need to pay for in terms of scholarships.

5

I followed it on Facebook for a while, and every quarter she posts a list on her website of national essay scholarships, like you can find on any other scholarship search site. We did not pursue any of those as the chances of winning are so small. I would not pay to join the membership and I didn’t gain anything from the free info.

We focused on local/state scholarships. I had made notes from previous senior awards nights in the newspaper so I knew which ones were available to our students and my girls applied to about every one they could qualify for. The GC had the apps for the local ones. I also kept an eye out on Facebook and did some Google searches for our state and sometimes intended major. These local scholarships are generally one-time awards, and while none were large, together they made a good dent in freshman year of their low cost schools.

My DD’17 did win one national, renewable scholarship that we found on Sallie Mae. It was targeted to her major and they offered a few hundred of them so it seemed worth a shot.

Finally, in addition to seeking automatic merit, my girls did their schools’ foundation or department scholarships. These are usually a common application for dozens or hundreds of endowed scholarships. (I guess I don’t know if every school does this.) DD’17 went to community college and there you applied every semester. She got one 4 of 5 semesters. DD’19 goes to a directional public and it is done annually there. She hasn’t gotten one yet but many are targeted to juniors and seniors. I do hear that a lot of students don’t bother so I make them try- it doesn’t take long.