I won $291,500 in outside scholarships - my story

On the coattails of that unresponsive AMA, here’s what’ll hopefully be a productive one! Before I post my story, I just want to say – I am in no way advocating that you only apply to outside scholarships, or even make any part of your college plan contingent on getting outside scholarships. This is a very bad strategy; outside scholarships are awesome, and for sure apply if you have time – AFTER coming up with a reasonable plan that includes financial safeties (schools where you’ll get merit aid, and/or are super cheap due to in-state tuition, whatever – find something that works for you) and executing on that plan. Only then is applying to outside scholarships a potentially good use of time.

I repeat: outside scholarships are NEVER something to be counted on. Please keep this in mind throughout this post, and this thread. I worked hard to maximize my chances for every scholarship, but there’s always a lot of luck in this process. Don’t let luck (or lack thereof) keep you from going to college.

So, with that long disclaimer, here we go–

I first started applying aggressively to scholarships in June of 2014. I’d moved away from home to accept an internship in another city, and self-supporting on a low wage – in a metropolitan area – is pretty rough sometimes. That’s when I started to have the, “If I don’t even have the money to go get groceries until this friday… how am I going to go to college?” epiphany. Again, please note that that epiphany spurred /a lot/ of emails to faculty, financial aid offices, and many institutional merit aid applications (I ended up getting $127,050 in merit from my school). However, at the time – without that offer in hand yet – I also applied obsessively to every single scholarship on Fastweb et al.

If you haven’t figured this out already, this is not a good idea. The time/reward ratio is way too low, and I was applying to all the "Ayn Rand Essay Contest"s out there, all the random sweepstakes, etc. And no, I didn’t get any.

I think the big takeaway here is to think long and hard about what opportunities you’re applying to: The “easy” stuff on Fastweb and similar sites are the scholarships literally everyone is applying to. You’re not going to win. Point blank. “But someone has to win, and it only takes 5 minutes!” is terrible logic – you can find a more reputable (harder to complete, honestly) scholarship in 5 minutes. (Related side note: I’ve been told local scholarships are super awesome. I personally never had any success with them, but I think that’s an anomaly. So, second takeaway: always prioritize local scholarships before national ones.)

Third point, in my mind, the outside scholarship world is really owned by a duopoly: (1) Scholarship Management Services/Scholarship America and (2) ISTS. They administer almost every big dollar scholarship, and even a bunch of local - mid tier ones. If you aren’t applying directly through their site, their applications are often embedded in a Foundation’s scholarship application site (the Burger King Scholars program is a good example). Anyway, this means that a whole ton of scholarship applications you’ll find yourself filling out – if you do decide to apply to outside scholarships – are going to be the same exact thing, or at least very similar. Save every application you fill out. Think about how you can fill it out better. Lots of these scholarships are autograded – the number of lines you can fill out matters. The content of those lines matters. Some programs even look for “unique” activities that not many other students (or any) listed. But, I can go into all these finer details if someone posts a question below :slight_smile:

I don’t want to make this post super long – I think those are probably my top three takeaways for most students. But, definitely ask whatever questions you have. Just for the record: it’s not just me. At every scholarship event I’ve gone to, I always see the same kids (or, mostly the same kids). Yes, part of it is being a good student, but another large part is figuring out what matters to the scholarship administrators and learning to represent yourself in the light they want.

Re: the stats question – 4.0 GPA (weighted is above that), upper-90th-percentile SAT score, family is pretty firmly middle class (but not upper middle class). But, for the record, there were Coke Scholars/GE-Reagan Scholars/etc that I see at every event that did not have top stats. Stuff happens.

List of outside scholarships won in case anyone has specific questions:
AXA Achievement Community Scholarship
Brad Feld Aspirations in Computing Scholarship
Burger King WHOPPER Scholarship
Coca-Cola Scholars Scholarship
Elks Most Valuable Student Competition Scholarship
GE-Reagan Scholarship
Harry E. Arcamuzi Aviation Scholarship
Jack Kent Cooke College Scholarship
National Space Club Keynote Finalist Scholarship
SanDisk Scholarship
Lint Center Scholarship
GoEnnounce “Define Yourself” Scholarship
VIP Women in Tech Scholarship

Do you know of any significant scholarships (>$1K) that do not have the “US Citizens, nationals or permanent residents only” clause?

That’s a super hard one. If you’re low-income, I believe QuestBridge allows international students to apply to colleges through their program. Other than that… it really is spotty.

I’m not sure if I have good recommendations for that problem, honestly. Top colleges often give full “need” to international students, but then the problem is getting in in the first place (which is orders of magnitude harder for internationals). Really sorry I don’t have more suggestions off the top of my head.

Pulled these from a spreadsheet a friend kept up:

BrokerFish Spring 2015 Scholarship Program
Rubincam Youth Award
The 2014-15 Young Patriots Essay Contest
The 7th GotScholarship 20K Give Away
Anthem Essay Contest
The Fountainhead Essay Contest
MCO Scholarship
BBG Communications Award
$1000 Scholarship Giveaway – that’s all the info the spreadsheet has, sorry!
AES Engineering Solutions Scholarship
$500 “Go Ennounce” Scholarship – actually won this one, so hey :slight_smile:
GotChosen Scholarship
$1000 Annual Scholarship for Visaplace
The Amazing Travel Scholarship

It’s late in California, so I’m heading to bed. Will answer any questions tomorrow after work :slight_smile:

What’s a good source for lists of scholarships that don’t require or emphasize financial need? I’ve tried filtering out the need-based scholarships on several of the scholarship sites, and the need-based ones keep showing up (along with other stuff I’ve asked it to filter out).

^^ that’s a good question, I am dealing with sorting for those right now. Courtney, when they say you have to have financial need how can you find how they define need. Is it the traditional COA - EFC or is there some income ceiling? I’m running into that issue.

Thanks for posting Courtney you have a super resume, very impressive.

So the million dollar question is how to figure out what matters to the administrators?

For us, the Us that are known for merit aid are pretty good about awarding merit, to the students they want. They may even give a bit more money if you are an Eagle Scout or whatever else they are looking for. Many of the outside scholarships do seem to have financial need as one component, at least when we were looking for S in 2006.

Well there are certainly ones that do not have a need component. Some are based on major or ethnicity or other factors. I have been compiling a list for someone who has some of those features–it is time consuming. Since this is a thread about outside merit that’s what we are looking for info on.

When you say that you won $291,000 in outside scholarships, how does this break out amount annually?

What is the amount (or scholarships) are automatically renewable for all 4 years that you will be in college (I know that you mentioned you won the Coca-Cola scholarship which is ~20k which can be used over a course of 10 years)

How many are just one time hits?

How many of these scholarships are you able to stack at your school?

Based on your experience, how is the school treating your outside scholarships; are they reducing any gaps in your financial aid package and then allowing you to reduce the self help component in your financial aid package before reducing their institutional aid?

Are any of the scholarship allowing you to defer your distribution over time? Example, you have more than enough to cover year one, will some of the granters allow you to defer their monies 2, 3 4 years down the line so that you can have a funding stream all 4 years/

What will be the tax implications on the scholarships that you do accept (as monies over the cost of tuition/books are going to be considered taxable income)?

Also, it sounds like these awards were merit based (congratulations)…I think that other thread was implying need based financial aid.

Apples to oranges.

@Ynotgo Honestly, I don’t know. Most of the above awards – while not financial aid – did take financial “need” into account. The big exception is Coke, which is strictly merit. Lots of middle class kids can win “financial need considered” scholarships, but if you’re high income, it’s probably a better strategy to get merit from schools.

@thumper1 Correct, with the above caveat :slight_smile:

@BrownParent Some of the later-in-the-year scholarships will ask for the FAFSA’s SAR, but usually scholarships will just ask for AGI, unearned income, etc for the previous tax year.

I’m not sure that there’s a hard income cutoff: few programs weight the financial need portion heavily – Elks MVS and the Jack Kent Cooke ones are two exceptions (Elks has a point system that kills applicants with incomes over, like, 50k, and JKC has an income cutoff of 95k at max – 33k is their average for Scholars, though). I’d say it probably becomes a lot harder to win outside scholarships that “consider financial need” if your income is ~120k+

That’s just based on my interactions with other kids at scholarship weekends – everyone usually gets a sense of what income bracket everyone’s from.

For reference, when I applied, I had an EFC closer to 20k than to 10k.

@sybbie719 That’s sort of a tricky one. Had to break out my spreadsheet.

The AXA Achievement Community Scholarship, Brad Feld Aspirations in Computing Scholarship, Harry E. Arcamuzi Aviation Scholarship, National Space Club Keynote Finalist Scholarship, Lint Center Scholarship, GoEnnounce “Define Yourself” Scholarship, and VIP Women in Tech Scholarship are one-time. This is a total of $7500.

The Burger King WHOPPER Scholarship, Coca-Cola Scholars Scholarship, Elks Most Valuable Student Competition Scholarship, GE-Reagan Scholarship, Jack Kent Cooke College Scholarship, and SanDisk Scholarship are all renewable. The Jack Kent Cooke College Scholarship is “last dollar”, though, so they give me access to up to $40k per year as needed (and up to $50k per year as needed for grad school as long as I do well in undergrad).

Not counting the JKCF in the figure, the total is 124,000. Per year is 31,000 (and freshman is 31000 + 7500 overall). Even if my school took away all of their own funding (they did not), JKCF would’ve chipped in that last ~20k (less for freshman year) up to my COA (51,030) per the last dollar nature of the scholarship.

With that said, I was able to defer the Coke Scholarship and the GE-Reagan Scholarship, so I currently have at least $15k for grad school. I plan to defer all four years (but this has to be done every year).

My school more or less stacked all of them. I did lose my grant (which was small to begin with), but I’m not sure where in the process that happened – a lot of scholarship notifications came in around the same time, so I went from “not overfunded” to “really overfunded” pretty quickly. Can’t really disagree with the school for pulling the grant; they had actually already met our need and then some with their merit offer, so to give us a grant on top of it was pretty generous (we had a subsidized loan offer, too, and a partial direct unsubsidized loan).

My school did eventually reduce their merit aid to fit everything below the COA, but I have it in writing that if I would ever need that money again, they’ll give me the originally awarded amount. That said, the only situation in which I’d lose my outside scholarships is if my GPA dropped substantially (or I committed a crime or something), in which case I’d also not be eligible for merit aid. So, anyway, barring stupidity on my part, everything’s covered.

The tax situation is a mess. Only $5k or so of that $51,030 should be taxable, but I’m going to see a CPA anyway because my tax situation in general is a mess (work situation is complicated, family situation is complicated…)

Congrats on willing that Coke scholar program! that’s one of the most difficult in the country to win.

I’m afraid I disagree with your estimate of the tax situation. Unless your tuition and fees are $46k and your room and board only $5k, you’ll probably owe taxes on a lot more than $5k, plus of course your earnings. You won’t have to pay on the deferred amounts or JKC unless you actually use the funds during the tax year.

Room and board isn’t taxable if the school makes it mandatory (it is for freshman), per CPA. Everything will be double checked before tax time.

Room and board IS taxable in terms of scholarships that cover them. Room and board are NEVER qualified educational expenses…ever. Only qualified educational expenses are exempt from taxes.

Many…MANY colleges require freshmen to live on campus. That still does NOT make room and board a qualified educational expense.

I’ve read that, but friends in a similar situation said they never paid taxes on room and board when it was required by the school, and a CPA is also saying that it’s tax free if it’s required. In any case, like I said, this will be checked up on.

And, in any case, a couple thousand in taxes is a very, very, very small price to pay for a free undergrad degree, a stipend every year, and a likely free grad degree. I’m happy to pay those taxes, even if the taxable portion is $15k (which is what it would be with room and board added in).

That CPA is wrong. It’s not taxable at a service academy, perhaps, but at regular old State U or Private U it is. Both of my kids have mandatory ‘live in dorm’ requirements, and scholarships over tuition/fees/books is/was taxable. For some reason, the IRS is rabid over ‘no free lunch’ and always tries to tax meals and lodging.

It is still a great deal to only pay taxes and get a free education. In our case it was also a great deal to make more of the scholarships taxable and for me, the parent, to get a tax credit. Next year (first time there is a full year of scholarships used), one of my daughter’s will pay quite a bit in taxes on her scholarships. It’s still better than me paying for her room and board.