Quote:
Originally Posted by flere-imsaho
For anyone who's helped a kid through this lately (either finding a college, or looking for scholarships) what did you use and what do you recommend?
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My wife made basically a near full-time job out of all this for a couple years here, but I reached out to my kid just to confirm the answers I was going to give you.
Aside from things like the common app & FAFSA (which I don't consider to be a"scholarship" in the sense of the word I think of), we didn't consider there being any sort of "one-stop shopping" The "good" news about that is that scholarship -- merit or need -- were often a fairly lengthy list
on a school by school basis.
So when you're digging into a school website for application/admission info, you can also begin the digging process on scholarships that might be available at that school. Look first for the automatics -- SAT/ACT scores, class rank, Eagle Scout & other organizational type things -- and then look specifically by either major or college (i.e. College of Liberal Arts, etc).
Then, more broadly, we dealt with local/state/national level scholarships individually. Think of every possible connection you might have to some group and explore whether they do scholarships.
I'll use our case as an example of what I'm trying to say. Not only did he apply for the obvious ones on his own eligibility -- SCV, CAR -- but also the ones through my wife -- DAR, UDC, Colonial Dames, etc. And then the next tier were things with more distant affiliations, he was eligible to apply for both Masonic scholarships (through his maternal grandfather) and USPS scholarships (through his paternal grandfather).
And then there's the stuff that's very local, things like Civitan/Lions/Elks scholarships that aren't tied to membership at all, or things like the local utility company scholarships open to children of any customer,etc.
Pro tip: there's a LOT of essay writing involved with doing a large number of scholarship applications. When possible, pick the most general topic possible from among their various prompts. I couldn't tell you how many times he was able to repurpose all or part of some essay to fit into a 2nd/3rd/4th application.