Scholarships are hard to win

<p>I've done two so far, and didn't win either. Right now im working on a third, in hopes of winning the $1000 scholarhip. What techniques do you use to win?</p>

<p>Applied to like 30 of them. Local ones are good.</p>

<p>Apply to local scholarships, and stay away from fastweb scholarships. I staunchly believe that fastweb scholarships are too competitive. Most scholarships have at least a 1/150 win rate. In my opinion, that kind of competition is too fierce.</p>

<p>kinglin, since you live in St. Louis like me, I know of some good ones that I can recommend to you. Message me, and I'll tell you about them. Btw, are you white? Because a lot of my scholarships are for black people.</p>

<p>black people are soooooooooo lucky</p>

<p>I tell you we thought the local major scholarship organization in our area sucked..I think they give it to people they know ..I am not kidding. One girl in our town when D. graduated got about 9 from the same committee for different majors! It was ridiculous.
D. won 6 scholarships from a variety of places. We learned for the most part not to apply for scholarships where there is only one ...apply to organizations that give many like Elks club. I think AmVets asks alot and doesnt give out many if I recall ..also Papa Johns....lot of work and then doesnt bother to acknowledge if you dont win..really rude. Look into state government. D. won 2 from her state leaders. She almost didnt do them figuring they were unlikely to award her one as she had no connections..but she got both a delegate and senatorial scholarship good for 4 years. She won $10,000 from one organization and that was really helpful! Another was only $500 but they held a dinner in her honor and listed all her accomplishments. And a few others..But she worked really hard at it.</p>

<p>To find scholarships we used the large scholarship books from the library, we accessed the state education website and checked in guidance office.</p>

<p>So they can't ever find out that you aren't actually planning on being a teacher? Because uh ahehe there are alot of scholarships for teaching. :P</p>

<p>Oh yeah, being black is cool. I'm working on 2 black people scholarships right now.</p>

<p>indiece, how many u win yet?</p>

<p>If you do a teaching scholarship you usually have to commit to that state to teach and if you dont..you have to pay it back from what I understand.</p>

<p>I got five. Two were from the college, and three were local. I will say a lot of the local ones were won by the same people, like angstridden's situation.
I'm a white girl. Not as cool as being black when it comes to scholarships :P There are two high schools in our county, and the way our high school announces scholarships is through the Senior Brief newsletter. The other high school uses a web site, which I frequented :P It didn't help me win anything, but it did help me remember deadlines.
Good Luck!</p>

<p>How do you find that out?</p>

<p>Your guidance office may be helpful with local scholarships.</p>

<p>Ruthiesmom, our GCs send out newsletters with a list of it and they have a website with a whole bunch of scholarships on it.</p>

<p>You can also look at the website of local schools within your area.</p>

<p>Yeah, I collected around 40K in outside scholarships, and only 2.5K is a national "fastweb scholarship" (the discover card tribute thing). The rest is local stuff. Go to your hs guidance office, they might have info.</p>

<p>Also, usually, many corporate scholarships have a national AND local component. For example, I didn't apply to the national Comcast scholarship, but I did win the local one.</p>

<p>And its true, many of my scholarships were "set-aside" for black students, but I'd avoid saying that black people are lucky. Its still tough stuff growing up black in this country, and someone with a less tolerant mind than myself could be offended.
;-)</p>

<p>"Its still tough stuff growing up black in this country."</p>

<p>--I agree.</p>

<p>We poured over those huge scholarship books and we found there are some very specialized scholarships..none of which D. qualified for but if you look into your background and you have something going on there may be a scholarship for it.
I cant recall the exact scholarships but there were some for relatives of veterans, firefighters, steel workers, one for fat people from Association for Fat Acceptance, low income, many many for different ethnicities, gays etc.
We looked at the organizations that we were members of which resulted in the $10,000 one and also organizations her grandparents were members of which she entered and won $1,000 from Elks..that type of thing.
Also she is good in art and asked the art teacher about scholarships and won a small one there.
So you have to really just keep looking.
For us the local situation was disgusting, it was obviously who you knew. D. had fabulous grades etc. and so did many other kids like the gal going to MIT with a perfect SAT and 4.0 and tons of leadership activities..but the scholarships seemed to go to the same person. As I said one gal with decent grades but nothing exceptional won about 9 of them for different majors!
I learned that my other kid is NOT entering that one..</p>

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For us the local situation was disgusting

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<p>I agree that it does seem that the same kids win almost everything, and they are almost certainly not the only qualified students. I think that the repuation of being "worthy" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same students get alot of slack with grades, deadlines and attendance, and if they are in the running for an award, it's a done deal.</p>

<p>(No sour grapes here, as S won some awards and scholarships, too. But it is clear who are the "chosen ones").</p>

<p>I used to get upset when the same kids got picked for everything it seemed..but then my hubby put a perspective on it.."ITS HIGH SCHOOL"..
LOL once I looked at it like ok bottomline its political , its highschool, that type thing I got over it.
We are pleased with scholarships D. won and we are sure glad we did not count on any local ones.</p>