Hello,
I am in grade 11 and would like to know when I should start applying for scholarships. I have not taken the SAT yet. Are there any specific websites where I can apply?
Your best bet is to get $$ from the schools themselves.
There are large national scholarships you can google or find on aggregators such as fastweb.
Or google local scholarships - which will likely be $500, $1000 - and one time only.
Also if your parents work for a large company, they may offer a scholarship program. Both my kids earned from my employer - one $2k and one $1k.
But your best bet is to set a budget and then find a school to achieve it.
Some do earn outside scholarships but for most it’s a lot of work with little payback.
Best of luck.
4 Likes
Our local high school gave students a booklet with scholarships to apply to locally.
Regardless of where a scholarship might come from, check to see the policies of colleges you are interested in, concerning outside scholarships. In my experience with three kids, outside scholarships were deducted from financial aid awarded.
4 Likes
But since many, many schools do not offer enough aid to meet financial need, outside scholarships very often do not negatively affect aid. And an extra $1,000 or $2,000 goes a long way!
2 Likes
Yes-- but…
OP- make sure you understand the terms of scholarships you are applying for. Many are for one year only. So as Kelsmom points out, they can add an extra thousand or two thousand dollars to your aid package. But if they aren’t renewable, you’ve still got a hole to fill for years 2, 3 and 4 which is when many students run into a buzz saw…
3 Likes
For the local scholarships, since you are a junior… Go to the guidance department and see what is available. Some schools have an online link to a spreadsheet. Ours had a paper newsletter and a drawer full of paper applications. Read through them and then pay attention to which seniors win them this year. What are their stats/credentials? It might help give you an idea if you are in the ballpark of the type of student they are looking for, and if it is worth the time and effort to apply. Our school has a scholarship awards ceremony, but scholarship winners are also printed in the local paper.
Some of ours say need based only and the winners tend to be as such. Some say only academics are considered, and the winners seem to be such. But some say academics are mainly considered, but the winners tended to be not the top students (i.e. no AP/honors classes). And then there is one that has you fill out the FASFA and seems to be need based, but the winners tend to be less needy than compared to our general population, but have strong academics.
And definitely read the fine print. Older S got one for $3000/year renewable, BUT it only would go toward tuition AFTER all other scholarships had been applied. His school gave him free tuition, so that one was useless.
But depending on the student/location, they can add up. Both of my kids wound up with $10K-15K for the first year. The remaining years, they got $5K-7500. And my kid with the lower stats actually got more $$$ since we knew better which scholarships to focus on.
1 Like
The best scholarships come from the colleges themselves. As a result, you shouldn’t apply to a college where you haven’t run the Net price calculator (NPC).
85 colleges “meet need”. It means that if your SAI is 12k, they will offer financial aid (scholarships, grants, and one 5.5k federal loan) so you don’t have to pay more. Well, it gets more complicated because they use the CSS Profile but you get the idea. These colleges are your best source of scholarships.
Some examples so you can run the NPC
Whitman
St Olaf
Muhlenberg
Bates
(And yes you need to run the NPC on EACH because each college calculates differently.)
All 3,500 other US colleges DO NOT meet need. It means you may only be able to afford 10k and your SAI is 12k and they cost 32k instate… well, not their problem.
These split into 2 groups.
First group offers merit scholarships. To have a shot, you need to be above the 25% stats for them, preferably top 10%.
These do not depend on your parents’ income, purely how you compare to their typical applicants.
Second group offers very little.
Run the NPC on 2 or 3 public colleges in your state.
Finally, you have Pell Grants based on your SAI (Available to all who qualify) which you get by filling out FAFSA as soon as it opens, and State Grants (like BF in Florida, Hope in TN and FA, PHEAA in PA…)
These will be the major scholarships/grants.
Then you have local scholarships that can help you move into your dorm, buy books, etc. They help with costs related to college rather than pay for tuition. In addition,many colleges consider that if you won them you don’t have as much financial need and cut it by the small scholarship amount to give it to s.o else.
Our HS has about 75 local scholarships to apply to, my kids applied to most they qualifies for (some have minimum qualifications, like being of Italian ancestry). One of my kids ended up with 10,000 in total (one is renewable, $1500 a year). I don’t know anyone who got an outside scholarship available to everyone, seems like a waste of time.
2 Likes
For mine, we got info on local ones from the guidance counselor office, and I also reviewed the local newspaper’s story on senior awards night the prior year, to help make sure I wasn’t missing any local ones. Did google searches for statewide scholarships and ones related to their major, or our church denomination, etc. And Sallie Mae scholarship search for nationwide.
Kids won several local ones, DD19 got a statewide one, and DD17 got a nationwide one. They didn’t waste much time on the nationwide ones, except for DD17’s (found on Sallie Mae) was for her specific major and they choose a few hundred winners each year so odds were better.
It was really helpful for us. No need based aid here, so every dollar they won was a dollar we didn’t have to pay the school.
Also, depending on what college you go to, there may be departmental/foundation scholarships for continuing students. For my kids it was a common application every year or every semester. A lot of students don’t bother with it, so my advice is to apply every time if it’s offered at your college.