Just a note about the Hesburgh-Yusko scholarship at ND. I don’t think that’s really technically a service-based scholarship, although it would help. It’s one leg of 4 legs. I think that scholarship is more about leadership and very very high academic credentials. My D just finished her freshman year there, and her good friend received this scholarship. This young man was highly sought after - admitted to H,Y,P, etc.
My daughter received the Hesburgh-Yusko as well as the Seaver. They are looking for true leaders and typically it revolves around service in a specific area. You’re not going to find just student body presidents or team captains. They really want kids who a deep passion for service. http://hesburgh-yusko.nd.edu/applying-to-the-program/ Again, there is a very rigorous interview weekend. Schools like ND, Vanderbilt and Duke have been able to recruit some of the most desirable applicants with these programs because unlike the Ivies, this is true “merit” aid. For families who do not qualify for merit aid, these are plum scholarships. The Ingram Scholarship is unique in that it does have a service requirement of 20 hours a month. My daughter felt that having this requirement has helped her maintain her focus. I see it as a part-time job that has paid for her tuition for four years and has developed her leadership and advocacy skills as well as put in a unique networking opportunity.
I shared this with the HS 2018 student thread and I thought I might share it here as well. This is a very good resource for scholarships I found a year ago. They list between 50 and 100 scholarships that have monthly deadlines. They are sorted out by month deadline and interest, like engineering for example.
It’s called: http://collegeapps.about.com/od/grantsandscholarships/
These are the first 10 scholarships that show up that have June 2016:
- $1,000 Easy College Money Scholarship
• Award: $1,000
• Deadline: Awarded Monthly
• Description: No essay required. Applicants simply create a free profile at ■■■■■■■■■■.
• Administered by ■■■■■■■■■■
• Get more information (Cappex)
- 180 Medical Scholarship Program
• Award: $1,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: These scholarships are for high school seniors and undergraduate students who have spinal cord injuries, spina bifida, transverse myelitis, or an ostomy.
• Administered by 180 Medical
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Student Academy Awards Competition
• Award: $2,000- $5,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This competition is for filmmakers with no previous professional experience who are enrolled in degree-granting programs and accredited colleges and universities as full-time students.
• Administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Actuary of Tomorrow - Stuart A. Robertson Memorial Scholarship
• Award: $9,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This scholarship is for students who are pursuing a career in actuarial science.
• Administered by the Actuarial Foundation
• Get more information (Cappex)
- "Aspiring Animation Professional" Scholarship Program
• Award: $1,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This scholarship is for high school seniors in the United States who are pursuing an animation-related degree program at an accredited post-secondary school or college.
• Administered by the Animation Career Review
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Ankin Law Undergraduate Need-Based Scholarship
• Award: $1,500
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: In order to apply for this scholarships, students must submit a 500 - 1,000-word essay on “The Biggest Threat to Social Safety.”
• Administered by the Ankin Law Office
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Ankin Law Scholarship for Law Students
• Award: $1,500
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This scholarship is for students who are currently undergraduate or graduate students at an accredited law school by September 1, 2016.
• Administered by the Ankin Law Office LLC
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Buddy Pelletier Surfing Foundation Scholarship
• Award: $1,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must have a history of surfing on the east coast.
• Administered by the Buddy Pelletier Surfing Foundation
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Charles A. Olayinka Memorial Scholarship
• Award: $1,000
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This scholarship is for students with bipolar disorder who are under the care of a licensed mental health professional.
• Administered by the Charles A. Olayinka Memorial Scholarship
• Get more information (Cappex)
- Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International Scholarship
• Award: $250
• Deadline: June 1, 2016
• Description: This scholarship is for Christian students who are studying pharmacy.
• Administered by the Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International (CPFI)
• Get more information (Cappex)
There are a lot more with usually 50+ scholarships given each month. They even have pages specifically for people who want to be a specific major. I just found 39 scholarships for people who want to major in engineering. They are all different. I know I’m definitely going here for scholarships.
Here’s the engineering page: http://collegeapps.about.com/od/grantsandscholarships/tp/college-scholarships-engineering.htm
Hope this helps out a lot of parents!
Also, I just came back from my Rocketry Club Interest Meeting. It was pretty informative. We’re going to, hopefully, be competing in TARC, or the Team America Rocketry Challenge. There were only about 8 people, including myself at the meeting, but we expect a lot of freshmen to join too. I’m actually friends with one of the students who started the club. We’re both planning to do the same class, Engineering Explorations I/Robotics, and so we started talking after the meeting about the class. The class itself is going to be a mixture of FRC, VEX Robotics, and SeaPerch (Underwater Robotics). I honestly can’t wait. I’m actually going to try to do FRC , also know as The First Robotics Challenge, next year in Robotics Club instead of Vex, I’ll be doing VEX Robotics in POE, Principles of Engineering. She’s actually going to add me to our school’s FRC chat group through Google.
If you want to check out about these wonderful STEM organizations I just mentioned, here are the links:
TARC - Team America Rocketry Challenge: http://rocketcontest.org/
FRC - FIRST Robotics Challenge: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc
VEX Robotics: http://www.vexrobotics.com/
@go2mom Congrats to your daughter for receiving the Ingram (and the other offers). Those types of scholarships are like winning the lottery (twice) and as valuable when you factor in the mentoring/networking/life experience opportunities.
As for Vanderbilt, it’s a great school with a nice campus in a fun town. And it’s the type of southern school with kids from all over the country/world (Duke, Emory, Vandy, etc.). So it feels very international. S’13 didn’t love it so didn’t apply, but S’18 really likes it and is very likely to apply, assuming he has competitive stats senior year.
Took advantage of a trip east for DD’12’s college graduation to have DD’18 visit three schools (Brown, Boston College and Wellesley). She liked BC the most, but is expressing an interest in attending college in the west, but kids can change their minds. I feel as though I have checked a box, at least.
Thanks, @dadotwoboys. She was very intentional in her application process to find scholarships that emphasized leadership and service. She wrote 54 essays over the course of two months and treated it like a job. And it paid off! She loves Vandy so it’s been a great fit. go2boy is a different animal and we’ll be looking for smaller LACs which also offer merit money. No one in my family swims in an athletic gene pool and there are so many academic superstars out there. I kind of enjoyed the money hunt but it takes a lot of time. @glido - how are you, old friend? It’s fun to see lots of Class of 2014 friends on the board here, too. I’m in the Northwest so look me up if you make it to Oregon!
Yup - right there with you. We’ll be doing the merit hunt again this time as well. Fortunately, I think S’18 would be pretty happy at one of the State Universities (he likes big) and may end up being his preferred path, So the relative safety (no guarantees) of those schools feels comfortable for him and financially doable for us. Out of state options will require some merit and he knows that.
go2mom - great to hear from you. 54 essays . . . wow! Best of luck to your 2018. We are at it again!
@go2mom Congratulations to your daughter! What an honor and to think that HOBY helped make the difference. DS was dropped off this morning and it was raining but kids were already cheering at 7am! Thank you for sharing this great information and I will research the details to determine if they align with DS interests and pursuits.
Good luck this morning to any SAT/Subject testers!!
I also decided to rethink my goals for the SAT I and II, ACT, and APs after reading a few articles.
SAT: 1350 or higher
ACT: 32 or higher
APs: 4 or higher on all APs
SAT II Subject Tests: 650 or higher
I just felt I wanted to be more realistic with more scores. I kind of feel like I’m selling myself short though. Is this an okay thing to do? Is it better to be real with myself, or tell myself that if I study just long enough, I can go even higher? I’m going to be honest, I’ve developed major testing anxiety over the past few months. Once I got my Chemistry SOL score, I asked my teacher what she thought about it. She said that that is where she expected my score to be and that it tells me that AP Chemistry might be a struggle for me. She said I should expect to get through AP Chemistry with a C and that that was just the hard truth. She also said that maybe I won’t truly be able to grasp Chemistry and that maybe it’s just something I won’t ever truly understand. After that talk, I just felt like going to the bathroom and crying a little. This whole year, Chemistry was the only class I truly stressed myself to do well in. I put so much pressure to do well in that class, but I always do something wrong that ends up not allowing me to truly succeed, like procrastinating on homework or just having a point in the year where it became really hard to do my homework at home since I couldn’t concentrate there, which led to doing most of my homework at the library whenever I can or not at all, which was rare. It really started to hurt me in February and March, once we started doing Moles and Stoichiometry. I felt I wasn’t studying enough and I apparently didn’t. I would’ve had very low test scores had it not been for my teacher allowing me to finish the test. During those tests, out of nowhere, I had started to get math anxiety. I wasn’t sure where to put the numbers I was using and what they meant and I spent so much time trying to figure it out that when class was over and I’d only finished half the test. I’m usually very confident with Math, especially math as basic as Stoichiometry and Moles go, but I don’t think I truly knew what those numbers meant. At first, I got a 40 on the Moles Test and then, after some intense studying, got an 83. I don’t know if it was because it was the middle of the year and I was feeling so much stress and anxiety, or whatever. After that Moles Test, I really did want to cry. I went to bathroom and blamed myself for not studying hard enough, for not truly learning the material, and for slacking off. That day, I learned there are truly two sides to me, the slacker and the hard-worker. The slacker is the part of me that tells me why bother, while the hard-worker in me tells me to get off my ass, do the work, but the work is never good enough. I constantly criticize and sell myself short, and I’m never able to truly congratulate myself for a job well done. I’m always working, but never truly happy with myself. Maybe I just don’t think I’m good enough. I want to hopefully try to fix this soon.
After I have those talks with my Chemistry teacher, I go to the AP Chemistry teacher and talk to her about it. After the whole Moles Test disaster, she made me feel so much better about myself and I stopped beating myself up a little bit. She motivated me, told me that it wasn’t a big deal, and that it was something I’d to work in AP Chemistry. She told me that students will go into AP Chemistry with strengths and weaknesses. I had told her my strength in Chemistry was Nomenclature, the only test I had an A on this year. All of my other tests were in the high to low B+ to B range, but I put full responsibility on myself for not studying enough. I actually study pretty well. I usually try and study two nights before the test for Chemistry, do some practice problems, and watch Crash Course Chemistry, Bozeman Science, and Khan Academy vidoes on YouTube. She also said something that made me want to be in her Chemistry class this year, instead of my current teacher’s class, and next year for AP Chemistry. She said that if I need any help next year, or this year, with Chemistry, that she would love to help. Even if I have the only other AP Chemistry teacher, she’d be be happy to help me if I need it because, as she put it, “I want to see you succeed, not fail in Chemistry. Based on what your Chemistry teacher told me about you, you’re definitely a very hardworking student who could use a little help and motivation. I know you feel like Chemistry seems impossible for you to grasp, but you’re not alone. I wasn’t a natural at Chemistry at first, even after trying my hardest. But once I started getting help from my teacher, it made much more since. One on one help really did wonders for me and sent me from a B student to an A student. I believe it can do the same for you too.” I remember that entire speech, which she told me after I told her about my SOL score, because it honestly made me feel so much better. That’s the difference between her and my current Chemistry teacher. My current teacher likes to tell me what she thinks is “the hard truth”, but it doesn’t really help me as much as it hurts me. It doesn’t motivate me, but I feel puts this idea in my head that I’ll never be good enough at Chemistry. That I’ll always struggle with it. The AP Chemistry teacher actually motivates me, gives really good motivational speeches, and doesn’t seem unenthusiastic or burdened to help me, unlike the AP Chemistry teacher. The AP Chemistry, during lunch one time, actually spent 5 minutes of her own time to teach me about significant figures, something that my current Chemistry teacher would be too bothered, or tired, to do. I feel like whenever I ask for my current teacher for help, she seems really tired and unenthusiastic, I know she has kids and all, so that could be it, however, I like the AP Chemistry teacher’s attitude of gratitude on life much more. She seems genuinely happy and she always has the brightest smile on her face when she sees me.
I don’t know what lies ahead next year, and I don’t know if I’ll stop beating myself up, but I hope that I’ll at least have that AP Chemistry teacher next year. I hope I’ll maybe have a better outlook on life too.
I apologize for this terribly, long rant, but I felt I needed to vent a little bit. Something I rarely do, even around my parents. I’m usually more of an “opinions to myself” kind of person. Did any of your DCs go through this? Blaming themselves for things that are sometimes out our control, or just constantly blaming themselves for not working hard enough?
I honestly my Chemistry teacher could see me now. I’m currently writing a notes outline for our last test on Solutions on Monday.
@ak2018 - You should aim for full scores on standardized tests. It is no different than taking a test in class and aiming to get the highest grade.
@texaspg I’ve just been having really bad testing anxiety lately. Maybe studying differently might help or calming myself down before a test.
Don’t take them if you are not ready yet. You got an year.
I don’t plan to take until the end of next year. @texaspg
DD’18 is back at her summer job and waiting for SAT results later this month
DD’8 took SAT subject tests of World History and Math 2C. She said she didn’t have time to finish the WH… Because her practice test only has ~70 questions but the subject test has 95 questions… And she failed to divide her time. She feels ok about the Math 2C test but she heard that she can’t just cancel test grading on one test (WH), she would need to cancel both. My question is does it really matter what she gets if she didn’t want to send to college? Can she just pick the scores that she wants to send? Will this subject test hurt her admission chance if she decides not to share with college?