<p>How hard would it be to get 15 K in scholarships for one year? Do you have to be a stellar applicant? I have like an ACT score of like a 29/30, but am ranked only in like top 15 percent (of like 200 or less students). Any chances?</p>
<p>You can get 15K in local scholarships. I know a girl at my school who got over 20K in local money. The girl didn’t even have a 3.0 GPA and she had a 17 on her ACT. So, it’s surely possibly. You just have to know where to look.</p>
<p>That is good to know, but what are the chances? What made her stand out?</p>
<p>I suppose it depends upon where you live and what outstanding abilities and such you have, as well as whether you are some kind of minority or qualified for various limited scholarships, how much volunteer work you do, leadership positions, etc. I don’t think it is at all easy to get that much. It would take a lot of work and luck. </p>
<p>My son applied for a number of scholarships, but only ended up with $1750 in local scholarships, all one-time awards.</p>
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<p>If you mean merit aid from a college…well, a lot would depend on your stats relative to the accepted students at the school to which you are applying. If you are at the top of the applicant pool at a college, you are more likely to receive higher merit aid than if you are not. If you are talking about outside scholarships…unless you land some larger scholarships, $15,000 would be a difficult number to achieve. DS received some decent awards but only netted $4000 in awards.</p>
<p>it’s very reasonable, but look on the local level like stated. Your chances of winning national/college merit aid that much are small. But if you fill out plenty of local applications $500 here and $1,000 there really starts to add up</p>
<p>I agree with celebrian25. There are tons of local scholarships. If you can win at least ten of them, then you will make some big money. The 20K scholarship that that girl won wasn’t really that hard to get. The applicant pool was very small. The only reason why she won was because she wrote a terrific essay and because she lives in a specific area of University City, Missouri.</p>
<p>Goodluck getting a 15 k! :]]]</p>
<p>I don’t think it is that easy to win 10 local scholarships, unless you are a super outstanding student or the best essay writer in the state. A lot depends upon where you are and whether you fit certain minority classifications or other special classes that scholarships may aim for–child of someone working at a particular business, dependent of someone in the armed forces, someone in a particular town or school, etc.</p>
<p>Laziness is why people don’t win as many. There’s a big difference between winning 10 and you only applied to 10 and winning 10 and you applied to an incredible amount. If you’re like me, you can’t afford (literally) to not apply to a lot</p>
<p>I think there is more to it than laziness. True, the more applications, the better chance of winning money. But it can’t be guaranteed. There are just too many factors involved. And some localities have more scholarships available than others. If a person is not a great essay writer or doesn’t have a lot of community service, or leadership positions, or whatever the particular scholarship committee is looking for, it just might not pan out, no matter how hard the person tries. If a person applies to a lot, he or she has a decent chance of winning something, but not necessarily anything approaching $15,000.</p>
<p>Where are you going to apply for school? Do they have any merit aid? For example Franklin and Marshall and Gettysburg have graduated scholarships from 5K per year up to 13K per year…so more like 20K to 52K over four years. They are based on your grades and your scores. Schools like Baylor, TLU, and Southwestern have a chart that you can calculate your “base award” from your GPA, rank, SAT/ACT etc… again, this is an award that is repeated each year. </p>
<p>You may want to look on the financial aid site of your colleges and see if they have any programs like the schools I’ve listed above.</p>
<p>$15k in scholarship money is all relative. First of all are you looking for 15k in scholarship money from the colleges or are you looking to get $15k in outside scholarships.</p>
<p>If you are getting need based financial aid and you need $15k to cover your EFC, then getting 15K in scholarship money really is not going to help your cause in this area because the money is first going to reduce your self help aid (student loans and work study) then it will reduce the the amount of grant aid that the school gives you. So you and your parents are still left with the $15k EFC.</p>
<p>If you attend a college that gaps, and you need $15,000 to close the gap, you must also take into consideration unless you get one of the big scholarships (coca-cola, gates and even those do not give you $15,000 a year) most local scholarships will only be good for one year. You will need a to come up with a boat load of scholarships to get the money you need and then what happens next year?</p>
<p>To get $15,000 in merit aid, one really needs to be a the top of the merit pool at the school which they are applying to. Since merit money is based on maintaining a certain gpa, one must take into consideration and ask, what happens if the gpa falls by a fraction (3.3 vs 3.5 needed to maintain eligibility). Do you lose the scholarship right then and there or are you given an opportunty to bring your grades back up. </p>
<p>You may have to look at what you can do to put a dent in the $15,000. If you arecurrently working after school, it may come down to saving every penny you get your hand on until you go off to college next year. when you are on summer vacation and/or breaks, you may have to double up on your hours. If you are not working, then you may need to get a job.</p>
<p>I got $20K/year in scholarship money alone. Some may get it for financial reasons through grants and need-based scholarships, but there are a lot of resources at colleges and universities for acquiring scholarship money. $12K of my money came directly from my school through scholarship competitions. Since I was involved in a lot of activities and had a stellar community service record, all I had to do was write decent essays and was picked for these scholarships. The key is community service. There are more scholarships for community service than anything else.</p>