It’s amazing how much college costs these days, and many people write it off as too expensive and they never get that degree that could make them more money in the long run. But with as much as college costs these days, there are a lot of scholarships out there that can offset the insane cost of college.
Good news is that it’s a lot easier now days to find these scholarships. There are a lot of $10,000 scholarships out there and a million other $5,000. There are many that don’t even require you to write an essay like this one from Unigo that’s worth $10,000. (https://www.unigo.com/scholarships/our-scholarships)
Unfortunately, many of these scholarships require you to already be enrolled as a student or future student in a college. However, because of this you have to already be dedicated to spend a large sum of money. Good news about this is these same scholarships also allow you to apply up until you graduate from college.
You won’t get every scholarship you apply for.
Know that you won’t get every scholarship you apply for. You probably will get one out of every hundred you apply for. Don’t let this scare you though. Someone once told me to think of this as a part time job. Spend about 14 hours a week doing this and you’ll be able to make more than you would at a part time job.
Keep in mind that every penny counts. Yeah those little $500 scholarships might not seem like much now, but in the long run that could be two or three months’ worth of payments when you calculate in the interest on the loan, if you have one.
For those of you with a loan this “part time” job is probably more ideal than a part time job. For those of you trying to pay month to month, keep in mind that there is no guarantee of a scholarship exactly when you’ll need it. This doesn’t mean it can’t still help though. By adding this to your part time or full time job you might not have to work your senior year.
Make sure you check out the colleges to see what kind of scholarships they offer. Some offer full ride scholarships if you apply early enough. Some have little perks like I got with getting all of my first semester textbooks paid for.
Have fun with it.
There are so many wacky scholarships out there, like ones for having blue eyes, or for writing a 100 word essay on what car freshener is best. People want to help out college students by giving out these scholarships, it isn’t always about writing the best essay, some of them don’t even require an essay.
Don’t over edit.
Don’t spend hours and hours spell checking and looking for grammatical errors in your essays. Yes, there are many scholarships where this counts, but keep in mind it’s not your application to Harvard. These people want to give students money they deserve, not find the next article for the New York Times. Definitely check your essays but keep it to a reasonable level when checking those itty bitty details.
Don’t Give Up!
If you get to about your fifth essay and you lose interest, take another glance at the dollar signs. The hours you spend on the essay could save you from several monthly payments, if not a year or two of payments. The few hours you spend on each essay could save you weeks’ worth of pay. Just keep the end goal in mind and stay focused.
Before you write this off as another thing that rarely ever helps someone, but this actually does work. I was able to get around $2,500 worth of scholarships through my college because of good grades and applying to the college within a certain time frame. I have personally been using some of these strategies and I hope to get a lot more scholarships in the future, and I hope you have a lot of success with this as well!
Make sure you apply to sites and programs that you trust.
Because these require so much information, you don’t want to hand out all of your info to a site and get your identity stolen or start getting viruses because you gave your info to the wrong person. Try to stick to ones that your college supports or advertises for, or do your own research and make sure it looks trustworthy.
Scholarship Sites to get you started off:
These sites require you to create an account and after you enter all of the information, they give you personalized scholarship results, so that you don’t have to dig through a bunch of scholarships that you aren’t even eligible for.
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