Scholarship Guide: Basic Tips & Tricks
Time:
Prioritize the scholarships with earlier deadlines. They will have less competition, and you can better manage your time applying when the deadline is sooner. Many early-deadline scholarships end up having excess funds because they did not have enough applicants.
Competition:
Look for scholarships that you think will have a smaller pool of applicants. This is a broad piece of advice, and it could mean a few things:
Focus on unique traits about you (scholarships that only allow female candidates will shrink the pool by 50%, so even more unique traits will shrink the pool even more!)
Earlier deadlines (a lot of students will wait to apply for scholarships til the last minute, meaning they’ll miss many of the early-deadline scholarships)
Essay-based scholarships scare some students off
Awards that do not have a set dollar amount also scare students off - you never know how much a scholarship might add up to if it says it is a “varying” amount!
Eligibility:
Make sure you read the eligibility requirements so you don’t waste your time. It can be a pain to read the fine print, but it can save you time in the long-run! This goes both ways:
If the name of the scholarship sounds like it doesn’t apply to you, like “Tiger Woods Award Scholarship” but you have never picked up a golf club in your life, you should still read on to see if there are any golf-related requirements. Sometimes, there aren’t any, and you will have missed a unique opportunity for yourself!
If the name of the scholarship sounds like it applies to you but you didn’t read the requirements, and suddenly your 3.85 GPA doesn’t meet their 3.90 GPA requirement, you’ll have wasted your time applying.
Essays:
Don’t be afraid of the essay-required scholarships for a few reasons: the applicant pools will be smaller (meaning less competition), you can often just tweak your personal statement or another essay you already wrote to fit better with the essay prompt, and they’re often the higher dollar amount scholarships.
Dollar:
Two things… (1) YES. The small-dollar scholarships DO add up, and (2) don’t be scared away by scholarship whose dollar amount “varies”. You never know when it will vary all the way up to $10k!! Think about it as an investment. If you win a $500 scholarship and it took you 2 hours to apply, you just made $250 an hour.