I’m a highschool junior and it’s almost my incoming Senior year. I always hear that its necessary to apply for scholarships during senior year, but that always confuses me because there are some students who are already applying for scholarships at my junior year right that are juniors. When’s the right time to apply?
The biggest scholarships will come from the schools themselves. Are you eligible for Questbridge? Do you live in a city that participates in Posse? What are your PSAT scores looking like; will you be eligible for National Merit?
Are you in-state for the California schools that you are interested in attending? Are yo eligible for Calgrant/ blue & gold?
Sit down, have a conversation with your parents. Run your numbers through the net price calculator to get an idea as to how much your family may have to pay. Find out realistically how much they are willing to pay or borrow. You may have to cast a wide net and also look for schools where you stand a good chance of getting merit $$.
There are not a lot of college scholarships that juniors can apply for.
As noted…the best scholarships come directly from the colleges. You will need to check YOUR college list for early deadlines for applications for those wanting to be considered for scholarships.
Will you qualify for need based aid?
The summer after junior year would be the time for you to look for scholarships to apply. Some big one would be deadline around EA. For merit scholarships from the schools (which are usually the bigger ones and renewable), many schools would require applying EA/ED with or without additional application.
@billcsho that is NOT true. Schools don’t usually require an EA or ED application for scholarship consideration.
BUT some DO require that scholarship wannabes submit their applications by a priority deadline…and this is what the student needs to check.
For example. university of Alabama requires all those wanting scholarships to apply for admission…and complete the scholarship application before December 1. But the school has rolling admissions…it’s not an EA or ED application…just an earlier deadline…and there IS a difference.
@thumper1 Read again what I said. I did not say ALL or MOST, but many schools. There are at least 2 of 6 schools my D applied several years ago required applying EA to be considered for merit scholarships while neither require separated application for merit aids. The other 2 of the 6 offer only need-based aids. The bottom line is, the applicant needs to find out. It is definitely TRUE from our experience.
To name a few schools:
Purdue, Tulane, UMich (must admitted by early Feb, so can be defered from EA but before regular admission)
https://admission.tulane.edu/tuition-aid/merit-scholarships
If OP is talking about local scholarships, which in our area range from $500-10,000 a year, or often just for one year, they often begin to pop up in the fall of senior year. Our HS guidance office used to have a bulletin board for them, and put them on their web page as well.
I started march on senior year but I do regret not starting in the fall. That’s when your local scholarships will start coming out to highschool seniors mostly
Context for my comments:
Our family currently has two children in college.
One of them, my FS(foster son), won the Gates Millennium and the Horatio Alger scholarships. Both of these are highly competitive (57,000 applied for Gates, 1,000 won) and time consuming. He started working on his Gates application in late summer, as it had 8 long essays to write. The application was due in January, but that is very late for most of the big outside scholarships, which are typically due from Oct - Jan of your senior year. (Alger was due in mid October as I recall).
My D (daughter) is a year behind my FS, and she started working on scholarships (research) her freshman year of high school. She won her first (Carson) in her sophomore year. There were very few she was eligible for, but what was valuable about her early research (other than the project management skills it taught her) was that it helped her see just what these scholarships were looking for in their applicants, at a time she could then make herself a more competitive candidate. For example - leadership, volunteerism etc. Seeing what was desired, she made a game plan to demonstrate that she was their girl 
She became more involved in school, volunteered more etc. Yes, she thought about it, picked stuff she enjoyed already, and dove in. It makes a much better impression to have 3 or 4 years of a track record, not just two months, not to mention you actually give back and learn from the experience! Who do you think is a more impressive candidate, the kid that talks about a one day Relay for Life walking around the track experience, or the kid who describes how they took their therapy dog to the nursing home every Thursday and formed a bond with the residents over the course of two years?
Now you’d think with all the extra work she put in, my daughter would have made out better (i.e. won more money) than my foster son, but this was not the case. The big scholarships like CocaCola etc. her test scores were not high enough, and some of the other large ones,she was ineligible because of race or socioeconomics. He was eligible for things she was not, and he was ranked higher from a rubric point of view on some of the ones (i.e. Elks) that reveal how they judge. Still, the experience overall was extremely valuable for her. Her ability to organize, stay on deadline and persuade people to write recommendations for her is now well developed - all of these things useful in life
As @NJRoadie mentioned, a LOT will depend on race/ethnicity, financial status, background/life circumstances, etc.
Personally I found some top scholarships cared about test scores, some didn’t. To clarify about Coke, they do not ask for any test scores. So it’s not a factor. But typically winners are of a profile that also happens to include high test scores.
Other competitions like Elks are very test-heavy. YMMV
OP, in my opinion the right time to apply is August - December. Is it extremely inconvenient, since that’s also app period? Yup. Unfortunately senior year just kinda kills. It’s worth it if you can snag some scholarships (like others said, the best ones tend to be directly from schools themselves), and most of the big competitions close in the Fall.
Fortunately this is also what a lot of colleges are looking for so, two birds, one stone 
@OHMomof2 funny thing too - she works for the Office of Volunteerism at her college :0 and gets paid :0 (although she still also volunteers) She got an excellent merit aid offer from her school ($11,500 a year off a 28K bill) - so it all worked out. She also won around $8K in outside scholarships, which isn’t anything to sniff at, free money is free money :0
To my knowledge, the Calvin Coolidge and Bryan Cameron scholarships are the only major (full tuition) completely merit-based scholarships that juniors can apply for, though I think Coolidge is closed now. As others have said, many scholarships open in the beginning of senior year, but it’s a really smart idea to prepare yourself ahead of time with testing, recommendations, a resume, etc.
Some scholarship type programs are earlier during the high school period. Hamilton Scholars is due at either the end of Sophomore year or beginning of Junior year. Questbridge Test Prep is due during junior year. Even the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has a scholarship type program due during a student’s 8th grade year. It paid for my student’s laptop and enrichment programs during high school and the same student went on to be a JCKF scholar during college. I think the State Dept. has a scholarship to pay for study-abroad. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund has some scholarship type programs due from 9th grade through 11th grade. These programs may not be straight scholarship programs for use in college but they have benefits that are worthwhile during the college admission process. Both of my children applied to things throughout high school and college. They would learn of opportunities and apply then or store them in a file for when due. The most interesting thing my DD applied for in high school was to be a world-wide ambassador for Google which lead her to winning other scholarships and awards.
One plan you could work on is to do the research for scholarships now, organize yourself with a chart of due dates and requirements. Look for local, national and subject-specific scholarships. You then could work on your college apps after school lets out so that you focus on them during June-August. Now that the Common App has the rollover function you can get a lot of the work for your applications out of the way during the summer before you tackle scholarship applications. The prompts for the main Common App essays are available now. Many colleges will begin releasing their supplemental essay prompts before the Common App release date. Sometimes writing to the admission reps can also get you a copy of the supplemental essay questions. Also some safeties are rolling admissions so you could apply early and already get an acceptance by July. My DD followed this plan and it worked at helping her get all her apps done early during her senior year.
After getting a bulk of your apps done or in good shape, you can then focus on scholarship applications. One thing you may realize is that the questions on the applications start to be repitive so my children had an “essay bank” they would use for these scholarship applications. For the most part, now applying involves cutting and pasting from previous essays and making some adjustments to update the essays with more current experience. Also do a resume at the beginning of summer that you can use to cut and paste for your admission and scholarship applications. My DD finds her resume very helpful in staying organized during the process. Plus she usually cuts and paste the resume information into the scholarship applications.
Fortunately you are a junior so you have plenty of time to apply. Just stay organized and the process will be much easier. Good luck!