Are you wondering how to win scholarships? How does the scholarship search work? Do you need help finding scholarships? When should you start looking? How do you get scholarships? Is it already too late? Are you looking for help finding scholarships?
I am here to tell you, that you can begin the search much earlier than you thought. And, your teen can search all the way through college and even grad school! Let’s figure out how to win scholarships!
Good luck to you and your teen.
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How To Win Scholarships: When is a good time to start looking for scholarships?
Start early!
Middle school is a great time to start looking for scholarships. If your teen is already in high school, start now! There are scholarships available everywhere! Here is a post I wrote all about getting ahead in middle school! This is a great time to figure out how to win scholarships.
How To Win Scholarships: How do I start the scholarship process?
A couple of great tips that Monica suggests, that I agree with is to 1) Keep track of due dates. 2) Have your teen write 3-4 essays with topics such as: Don’t Text and Drive, How Can Today’s Youth Save Our Environment, What is Your Dream Job?, etc. Here is the link to this year’s Common App essay list.
How To Win Scholarships Finding scholarships online
You can find scholarships online in many places. Go to Pinterest and do a search for the category you are looking for. You can search by month, essay or no essay, type of scholarship -like engineering or no essay.
The possibilities are endless. You can also Google different businesses, both local and national. Many of them will have a tab for scholarships that your teen can apply for.
How To Win Scholarships: How to get college scholarships and grants
The main trick to getting grants and scholarships is to try and try and try. Your teen will not get all that they apply for. But, if they use the tips from Monica, then the possibility increases greatly! For just a couple of hours of work, though, the return is worth it?
How To Win Scholarships: Do college scholarships work in the real world?
Yes, they do! Let me tell you the story of my oldest son. The college he decided to go to was about $40,000 a year. This is A LOT!
My son had worked hard in high school, and graduated with a GPA just shy of a 3.5 and his ACT score was 27. He also earned the BSA Eagle award, and had a well-rounded resume, but as you can see, fairly average compared to a perfect ACT score and 4.0+ grades.
He went to the merit aid scholarship interviews as an incoming freshman. These were set up the spring of his senior year.
It was worth the trip. When he came out of these, he received $17,000 a year.
My son also auditioned for, and made, the college choir. This was a stipend of $1,500 a year. He also got $1,000 a year just for filling out the FAFSA!
This totalled up to $19,500. So, down to about $20,000 from $40,000.
This was a much better number to work with. Combined with what we had saved after paying off my husband’s student loans, we could afford about 5 semesters.
*Read on to find out how he graduated debt-free!
How To Win Scholarships: Can a student earn scholarship money in college?
Again, the answer is yes! First, our son kept his grades up to keep all of his scholarships. Then, he kept applying to the college for other scholarships, as well as applying to outside scholarships, and also applied to his fraternity after his freshman year. He earned about another $12,000 doing this.
How To Win Scholarships: What is the actual cost of college, really?
His freshman year, the total cost was just under $40,000 without scholarship money. He lived in the dorm and had the full meal plan.
($40,000 – $19,500 interview scholarship money – $20,500 from our savings = $0 debt)
His sophomore and junior years, he lived in the fraternity house, and had a partial meal plan both of those years. That cost was about $35,000 without scholarship money.
($35,000 – $19,500 interview scholarship money – $6,000 outside scholarship money – $9,500 from our savings = $0 debt) for each of these years
His senior year, he lived in an apartment building on campus. All housing was owned by the college for all four years. That year he didn’t have any meal plan, so it was more like $32,000.
($32,000 – $19,500 interview scholarship money – $3,000 outside scholarship money – $9,500 from a combo of our son’s savings and ours = $0 debt)
The total cost (Cost of Attendance) included tuition, housing, board (meals), and fees. We knew upfront the total amount of fees, which was really nice -there were no surprises.
How To Win Scholarships: Can someone graduate from college debt free?
Again, yes! We worked together as a team with our son. I learned most of these strategies from Monica’s guides. My son worked part time starting when he was 15 during summer breaks and part-time through a few school years when he had time. He also had a part-time throughout college for more. His goal was to have $3,000 per school year.
He ended up with more than he needed because the college was small, and it was in a small town. There just wasn’t a lot to do around there to spend money on. This ended up helping to pay for college as well.
Four years later, he graduated with a double major -international business and Spanish translation and NO DEBT. (He was even able to do a short summer class abroad with a combination of his and our savings -without borrowing anything extra.)
How to Win Scholarships: -Watch Mel’s episode on YouTube
I have all sorts of parenting teen tidbits of info on my YouTube channel –check it out here!
✅ Developed by Monica Matthews -she helped all 3 of her sons win over $100k in scholarship monies! Her motto is “Learn how to apply S.M.A.R.T. to WIN MORE.”
✅ Monica’s blog is a great place to start to find really helpful information for finding scholarships, and from there you can join her really active Facebook group (I love all of her tips!)
✅ She has developed a parent guide and a student guide so that you can work together as a team. If you order both, you get a really great price break, and the prices are amazing in the first place!
✅ And, now she has developed a scholarship organizer/tracker that is really amazing. It is a spreadsheet where you can keep track of all sorts of information! I was able to easily use this, and I am very non-techie, so I feel sure anyone could easily use it as well!
How To Win Scholarships: Find scholarships on your own
Here is the link to the actual episode.
Be sure to watch the video and look at the notes below to find out how to win scholarship money!
⏱ :33 Tips for success
⏱ :50 Where to look at local high schools
⏱ 1:18 Other local websites to check
⏱ 1:27 Who to talk to
⏱ 1:37 Look on Pinterest
⏱ 1:48 Search engines to check
⏱ 1:57 How to use email
⏱ 2:17 Keep track of…
⏱ 2:41 What to do about 3 months ahead
⏱ 2:58 Have 3-4…
3:30 Or, use Monica’s method!!
⏱ 4:09 How did she get started with and develop this method?
⏱ 4:12 She is endorsed by the Smart College Visit and is known as “The Scholarship Mom”
⏱ 4:40 Her guides are great for both parents and students!
⏱ 5:24 She put 3 kids through college- no debt because of her method
⏱ 6:25 New!! Scholarship tracker tool!! It is so easy to use!
How To Win Scholarships: Another resource
Monica recommends this one book as a resource for finding scholarships. You only need to purchase it once even though it is republished yearly. The newer publications may have tweaks to submittal dates, but if you go to the actual websites, you can pencil in the correct dates, usually they’re still in the same month, just maybe a different day.
I hope that this helps you understand how using various strategies including scholarships can make a big difference to the cost of college!
More posts related to How To Win Scholarships:
Top 8 Senior Year Expenses to Prepare For and How to Make them Affordable
Conversations To Have As Your Family Considers College
Best Resources for a Scholarship Search
The Opportunity Cost Of College
NPP Review of Mama Bear Legal Forms -if you have kids over the age of 18, please read!
Fill Out the FAFSA: 5 Tips To Know!
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