Howdy! I want to apply for local scholarships and so far I finished about 25 and I’ve heard back from a couple to confirm that I lost… My goals to complete a hundred but I’m looking for tips to make my application stand out. Does anyone have any advice on making a great application?
I’ll also take scholarship recommendations if you have any.
Now how would anyone here be able to give you names of local scholarships…without knowing where you are?
I think you should target scholarships with a stronger likelihood of being accepted. For example, my kids did local music scholarships (both were musicians), their elementary school PTO (where we were active), their elementary and HS teachers associations (both awarded scholarships), and a local church where they both had played in music festivals. There were a few others too.
But they didn’t just complete a random 100 local,scholarships.
And they “stood out” because they both were well recognized already by the awarding groups.
Have you gotten into these schools? How much is your net cost? If you just got the federal student loan I don’t think you’ll qualify for enough need based aid to make up what your parents can’t pay, and I don’t think you can make it up by winning a few local scholarships.
Since your parents haven’t been able to save anything for college, you need to find out what they’ll pay out of current and future income. Are they still sending $47k/year to their business endeavors in Africa? Schools won’t give you money so your parents can invest in businesses overseas, so if your parents can’t/won’t reduce that number to funnel money to your college costs you may have to target different schools.
Were you able to improve your 30 ACT and 3.2 UW GPA? Did you apply to any schools that offer merit? Schools that offer merit awards are the best source of aid.
I agree with @thumper1 that local scholarships are better. The people know what you’ve done in the community. They know the parents and the siblings. The caveat is that the local scholarships are typically for small, one-time amounts.
If you need more than thousands of dollars in aid, that is not going to happen.
Recommendations: have killer stats. Near perfect SAT/ACT scores and high GPA with socially-aware EC’s that have been long term causes are the usual. Even then, however, it is difficult to get outside scholarships because everyone is asking for money.
@Thumper1 aww I don’t think any activities or community work have any scholarships(besides school) so I guess I’m out of luck.
@austinmshauri I didn’t apply to UT(I didn’t like it as much as tech or A&M.) I’m accepted into UTD, Tech, and A&M and waiting on University of Miami. I think A&M is 12k, Tech 20k, UtD is 21k and PVAMU isn’t a choice anymore because they cancelled their transfer program.
PS they don’t pay for businesses, they pay their former church, grandparents, old community etc. Stuff that they really can’t Cut down that happens to be in Africa.
@“aunt bea” my 30 is the same (but alot of my local Scholarships say they only take the New SAT) with an UW of 3.5 and I’m starting to get why I’m losing. I guess I’ll keep applying but thanks for explaining (bc I can’t take any more ACT or Sats by most of these deadliness )