My daughter is a freshman in college. She was not awarded any scholarships that she applied for last year. She’s going to try again this year for her sophmore year of college. The due dates on some of them are soon, but she’s only been in college for 2 months - should she use her high school teachers’ and guidance counselor’s recommendations? Can she use the ones from last year or will she have to ask them for new ones? What’s protocol, and any advice on how to handle this? No one at her college knows her well enough to write a letter and I don’t think she’d be comfortable even asking. Her college is very expensive and only provides need-based scholarships. Just because FAFSA says we can afford it (ha!) does not mean we couldn’t use some help paying for it.
The specific scholarships, if they are available to current college students, should have instructions on what recommendations, if any, they want.
My advice would be for your daughter to start going to office hours posthaste to start making connections with her professors. Two months at college is plenty of time to get to know a professor well enough for recommendations.
D20 started networking with professors within the first couple weeks of classes freshman year (yes during Covid virtual teaching). She has received glowing recommendations, gotten plenty of excellent advice and counsel, and also three unsolicited job/internship offers from different professors (even one from a department she had no contact with prior, solely based on a recommendation that department received from one of her professors).
She has several applications in this year for summer internships and scholarships. She had no trouble coming up with professors willing to write the 7 different letters of recommendation needed across the applications. Her professors were the ones telling her about the programs and scholarships she has applied for and encouraging her to throw her hat into the ring. We have fingers crossed one of the summer opportunities will come through, they are super competitive.
Professors want to help students who are proactive and passionate about their fields of study. The more the professors know about a student’s goals and plans, the better that professor can provide advice and assistance. They can also help guide you into resources (and money) you might not have known were even available. My daughter had no plans to have an on campus job and now has a really nice one in her field of study, paying above the usual rate, that doesn’t negatively impact her other academic work at all because it is very flexible.