Son rather plays his video games.
Need to vent.
Make him responsible for some of his costs. Books, spending money, and federal loan amounts. Tell him if he gets a scholarship, he doesn’t have to pay that amount of those items.
However, honestly, the best scholarships come from the colleges themselves. You can waste a lot of time applying for outside scholarships and get nothing, or very small amounts that are only for the first year.
Not every family can afford to pay what the school expects.
Not every family will pay if the student isn’t putting in any effort.
However, it is worth noting that the vast majority of scholarships will come from the schools themselves. Outside scholarships that you apply for are usually very small and often only for one time.
(I say this while acknowledging that I received several outside scholarships- including one for 20k over 4 years. However, that is very, very rare.)
If there is a scholarship that your child qualifies for, it is indeed within your parental right to require that your child apply for it. Saving money can mean more options for the student - all the way from making a particular college/university affordable, to covering the cost of books.
Not to mention of course, that if the kid only is interested in playing video games, you need to ask yourself whether or not the kid is ready for college.
You can simply refuse to pay the full cost. That will make him lay off the video games, after a brief tantrum perhaps.
If you can estimate the probability P of winning each scholarship, you can estimate the expected value of the return on investment for filling out the contract: P*(value).
So for a $1000 scholarship with a 1 out of 100 chance of winning, the expected value is $10.
When my daughter was in this situation, there were very few scholarships what were worth her spending any time on from the point of view of return on investment. She applied for a large one from Google for women in computer science that seemed like she had a real shot at because of a summer program that she did. She didn’t win that one either.
Because she had already been admitted to her top choices early action, and she was taking a bunch of heavy AP courses, it was pretty clear to me that asking her to fill out other scholarship applications was a complete waste of time.
We told our kids that we would pay tuition, room, board and fees. They had to drum up,the money for books, and all discretionary spending.
You need to establish something your student will be responsible for paying…otherwise, he could easily say “why bother.”
Random community scholarships for a few hundred bucks here or there are unlikely to make a difference in the overall long-term affordability of a given school. The best aid, as mentioned by romani, is institutional. If seeking meaningful merit aid, your son should focus his efforts on his grades and test scores, not on applying to lots of little scholarships. Even the most elite, generous, meets-full-need schools expect a student contribution of approx. 3K annually (the amount that one might be expected to make in a part-time job).
Is your son a good student? Does he show a good work ethic in his schoolwork?
How about saying something about how expensive college is and you don’t know how you are going to be able to pay for it all of it and then talk about all the things you are going to give up in order to pay for his schooling? In other words lay some guilt on him. 
Us too. its been very hard getting D16 to apply for some local, small, 1-yr scholarships that I want her to apply for.
i have 2 motives: a few extra spending dollars or a few flights home during the semester; and bragging/encouragement to the local PTO/PTA groups that i’ve been a part of for many years. But now that she has a nice scholarship in place from the school she likes, she’s just not that into anything else. shaking my head.
I have pangs of guilt that I did not save enough in her 529. She works her butt off in school and has achieved good enough grades such that she’ll have good, affordable options. I don’t worry about the outside scholarships, but I’m sure she’ll want to go after a couple of them.
Does he have a part time job? IMO, that’s a much more useful use of his time if the goal is to get money for college.
Do schools ever reduce merit awards to reflect the outside scholarships students have been awarded? My kids were always required to report any scholarships or awards from outside sources, so I assume this is a common practice. (maybe I’m wrong, just raising a question here) I know students whose need based scholarships were reduced by the amount of outside source scholarships. I don’t know if this could be a consideration at all in searching out outside scholarships?
Usually merit awards are not affected by outside scholarships…although they can be…and this depends on college policy.
Scholarships must be reported to the school…the school decides what to do.
Need based aid awards are affected by outside awards because those outside awards reduce your need…and therefore your need based aid is reduced.
Romani makes a good point…a part time job might be the best plan!
Thanks @thumper1 - I always thought that from the hard working kid’s point of view, those reductions were below the belt blows - especially as in the cases I’m aware of, the outside scholarship was a one-time, non-renewable award whereas the school award would have been for four years.
I was pretty mad at my daughter for this in high school. I MADE her apply to one the high school gave to athletes, but she didn’t win. Another local scholarship she brought home the form but lost it. We really looked everywhere, but she didn’t apply.
This year, as a college sophomore, I MADE her apply to a scholarship, and I was actually pretty proud of her when she completed the application. It was a pain, and required 10 of her hard earned dollars to get a transcript to attach, required her to ask a prof for a rec (and the first guy turned her down), other rec, and for her to create a resume. She probably won’t get it but it was a good exercise in what is required to get an internship or other position that requires an application. It was hard work.
She has a bunch of scholarships and financial aid, but also (now) realizes that it is easier to spend the time and $10 to apply for a scholarship than to earn $500 or $2000. There have also been times over the last few years when she would have liked to have the $500 a local scholarship would have provided.
D#1 went to a K-12 magnet school when she was in middle school. Didn’t like the school that much, especially for high school, but one thing they did that I really liked was make the seniors apply to 3 colleges, 3 scholarships, and 3 grants of some type. Every student had to do it, even if they weren’t going to college, even the boy who was already signed up for the marines. It really taught them the finances of college and showed them that there were scholarships out there. These were a very mixed group of students, most would be considered ‘non-traditional’ and their choices of colleges reflected that with everything from Ivies to Naropa Institute.
Maybe there is a video game scholarship?
So far all the merit awards both my kids have been offered would be reduced by outside scholarships. Which, as was pointed out above, are typically one year only. In my kid’s cases, taking outside scholarships would have hurt them in the long run. Always check the specific policies at the schools where your kids are applying.
At every school I looked at (ranging from LACs to large public Us), the outside scholarships would first be applied to gaps, then self-help (loans, WS, etc), and then it started to vary. Some would reduce need-based aid first (as need-based can’t go above COA-EFC) and others would then either reduce merit or the parent contribution. It’s totally school specific.
OP didn’t say son even has institution grants or scholarships, or that they would be reduced. My kids had no financial needs grants so everything from the outside would have been welcomed, money in our pockets.
Our experience -
Some of the merit scholarships were automatic, but others required an extra essay or two for consideration, and/or perhaps an interview.
If a student gets a free ride (full tuition plus room and board), outside scholarships such as a National Merit Scholarship can stack on top of this to cover additional expenses such as books and travel, up to a limit set by the school.
Small scholarships were given out buy the high school, but students did not compete for these and were awarded these by nomination.