<p>I have spent hours searching for non-need, merit scholarships on various often-recommended scholarship search sites. </p>
<p>I have found perhaps three possible scholarships. Even though I've filled out the online questionnaires, disclosing our location, race and other information, the search engines have turned up about 400 scholarships for which my daughter would never qualify. For example:</p>
<p>The United Negro College Fund is not going to give my white daughter a scholarship.</p>
<p>She clearly is not graduating from a Walla Walla high school, as we live in the southeast.</p>
<p>She is not a sea cadet, whatever that is.</p>
<p>And the Target All-Around Scholarship was discontinued several years ago.</p>
<p>Why do these computerized search engines turn up so many irrelevant and nonexistent scholarships, and why do so many places keep recommending them?</p>
<p>Scholarship search engines are largely a waste of time in my opinion. If you have the time to dedicate yourself full-time (and I literally mean “full-time” here, as in “make it your full-time” job) it might be worth it but the best scholarships are going to be ones from the universities themselves. There are hundreds of thousands of other college applicants applying to these same scholarships, and (especially for the ones that don’t require any work such as writing essays and submitting to interviews) the likelihood that she’ll win even a small one is vanishingly low. Even if she does win one, most of them are tiny anyway and they only last for one year. Don’t get me wrong; they’re nice to have, but trying to finance a college education through private scholarships is only marginally more likely to succeed than playing scratch lottery tickets all day.</p>
<p>People recommend these scholarship sites based on the myth (well, at this point it’s really a lie now, isn’t it?) that there are millions (or even billions) of scholarship dollars that go “unclaimed” each year, conveniently omitting the fact that most of those are employer benefits and the rest are either super-competitive mega-scholarships run by companies like Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart or tiny local scholarships. </p>
<p>In short, if you’re looking for scholarships, this is the order you should probably prioritize your search:</p>
<p>Gardna, you are 100% right. This is the approach we took in the search for merit money (yes, it took a family to do the hours and hours of work required). </p>
<p>To see how our DD fared against the graduating class, I did a little down and dirty analysis of the scholarship award list distributed at graduation (though not complete, gave a pretty good idea of the scholarships won by kids in the graduating class). </p>
<ul>
<li><p>25% of the class won one or two $250 to $500 one time scholarships, mostly from the list kept in the guidance office (25% of class had 3.5 or higher uw gpa, so correlation seems appropriate). </p></li>
<li><p>A couple of kids got $1,000 or $2,000 total from that same scholarship list (all had 4.0 GPAs and were state level athletes - although scholarships were not sports related). </p></li>
<li><p>5% or so got one time university scholarships of between $250 and $4,000 (the $4,000 was a combinationof 8 smaller scholarships in a unique major). </p></li>
<li><p>1 girl was daughter of private university professor, who received full scholarship<br>
because of parents employment.</p></li>
<li><p>3 or 4 (out of 600!) got big, multiyear university scholarships (our DD was one). </p></li>
</ul>
<p>After graduation, I had a number of parents from the class tell me that my DD must be brilliant to have gotten so large a scholarship. I told them the truth: She is a strong student, but not a 4.0 student. Her strengths came in her well rounded knowledge base from years of extra curricular reading, her long term commitment and hard earned success at high level activities like regional music programs and club sports, AND HER DECISION TO GET OFF HER REAR END AND APPLY FOR THE BIG SCHOLARSHIP! So many kids focus on these small scholarships and completely miss out on the significant opportunities. Read the universities website and scour their foundation’s scholarship list for opportunities. Don’t waste your time on these search engines.</p>
<p>** 3 or 4 (out of 600!) got **big, multiyear university scholarships<a href=“our%20DD%20was%20one”>/B</a>.</p>
<p>After graduation, I had a number of parents from the class tell me that my DD must be brilliant to have gotten so large a scholarship. I told them the truth: She is a strong student, but not a 4.0 student. Her strengths came in her well rounded knowledge base from years of extra curricular reading, her long term commitment and hard earned success at high level activities like regional music programs and club sports, AND HER DECISION TO GET OFF HER REAR END AND APPLY FOR THE BIG SCHOLARSHIP! </p>
<p>So many kids focus on these small scholarships and completely miss out on the significant opportunities. *</p>
<p>I completely agree. </p>
<p>At my kids’ high school, those who got the big scholarships got them from SCHOOLS. </p>
<p>Every year we see kids on CC that say that they wasted many, many hours applying for 30+ private scholarships and ended with nothing or $250 for only ONE year. They could have made more money working a part-time job during that time! </p>
<p>THese kids are heartbroken because they thought that they could make their favorite schools affordable by winning private scholarships.</p>
<p>The biggest scholarships are from the schools that award them. </p>
<p>The only private scholarship my kids got was from my H’s work. </p>
<p>Their big scholarships come from their COLLEGE. They both have free tuition, one has free housing as well, the other gets an additional $2500 per year. </p>
<p>My D will be applying for college scholarships, and I think she will have an excellent chance to receive some (4.0 unweighted, over 5.0 weighted, 35 ACT, NMSF, 3 varsity sports/year, although not good enough to be recruitable, very good ECs, great recs). However, the only guaranteed ones at the schools she is considering are partial National Merit scholarships. We are also fortunate that we can afford our excellent instate public (UNC Chapel Hill).</p>
<p>The discussion today has been the most straightforward I’ve seen so far about private scholarships. I am trying to make sure I do my best as a parent to help her with the financial aid part of this process!</p>
<p>My D will be applying for college scholarships, and I think she will have an excellent chance to receive some (4.0 unweighted, over 5.0 weighted, 35 ACT, NMSF,</p>
<p>Schools with competitive scholarships that won’t be affordable without big merit can be her “financial reaches” because the award amounts are unknown. </p>
<p>Schools with assured BIG scholarships can be her financial safeties.</p>
<p>D was not one of the 4 NMF at her school, but was in the top 12% of her class. Her ACT score was 31 - not exceptional, but definitely strong and above the minimum required for consideration. She has a talent for writing and is very comfortable speaking to adults about important topics in a natural, entertaining and insightful way. I would say that this played as large a role as her other qualifications in the selection process.</p>
<p>Also, she did a great job of finding a school that was a great match for her, rather than going for a high reach school. This made her attractive within the scholarship pool. She is going to benefit from better access to professors and better opportunities as a result.</p>
<p>Most schools will use outside awards toward any unmet need and then reduce loans or work study before replacing any other grants. </p>
<p>My daughter has won several thousand a year in outside scholarships for the past two years. None of them came from search engines! She applied for local scholarships that were in the packet given out by her guidance office and a few that were actually listed on another HS’s website but weren’t school-specific. Total time spent was probably 4 hours. IIIRC, the $ for Scholars alone was $1500. She was also nominated for Red Cross and some other smaller scholarships by her teachers. She did not apply to one award that was renewable at $4K/year because it would have only replaced other grants at her school. I will say that our district awards a lot of scholarships because we do several big annual fundraisers and many businesses and families, including ours, choose to sponsor scholarships which can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. </p>
<p>Her college’s website has listings of scholarships from the Alumni Assoc. and other organizations that are usually major-specific and require recommendations/nominations. She was nominated and chosen for a $1500 scholarship this year simply because she sent an email to her advisor inquiring about it. </p>
<p>Sometimes it pays to pick the low-hanging fruit!</p>
<p>*D was not one of the 4 NMF at her school, but was in the top 12% of her class. Her ACT score was 31 - not exceptional, but definitely strong and above the minimum required for consideration. She has a talent for writing and is very comfortable speaking to adults about important topics in a natural, entertaining and insightful way. I would say that this played as large a role as her other qualifications in the selection process.</p>
<p>Also, **she did a great job of finding a school that was a great match for her, rather than going for a high reach school. This made her attractive within the scholarship pool. **She is going to benefit from better access to professors and better opportunities as a result. *</p>
<p>Good points. And congrats to your D for winning this competitive scholarship. </p>
<p>There are also schools that give assured scholarships for stats and those can be financial safety schools because you can be certain to get those scholarships. :)</p>