Scholarship Secrets
I remember the spring semester of my senior year of high school. The scholarship awards banquets never seemed to end. I also remember my friend Andy saying to me after the last banquet, “Geez. They should have just called these all ‘The Cara Awards.’”
Yes, it’s true I was a good student, but that’s not what got my name called so many times. It was my determination.
I spent a lot of hours after school meeting with my counselor to find all of the scholarship opportunities offered by local businesses. I spent many hours in the evenings applying for these local opportunities. I fit it in between studying and filling out college applications. And not many other kids did. That made my competition a lot smaller, which in turn made my combined rewards a lot larger.
I didn’t win every local scholarship I applied for … but I did get about 80-90% of them. And all that extra work cut my potential college loans by half (if not more than half). My time invested into the local scholarship market was well worth it.
See, most high schoolers aim for the stars when it comes to scholarships. (Which isn’t an entirely bad thing.) You want the biggest scholarship out there, and so you pour all of your time and energy into applying for those.
Yes – it’s a great investment of your time. If you get the scholarship. But you know what? Investing time into small scholarships is well worth it, too! Even if they only sustain for 1 or 2 years, all of those added up can take a large chunk out of what you require for loans and make college much less expensive in the long run.
I actually ended up getting a pretty good academic scholarship to my first-choice school. But it was the smaller, local scholarships that made the biggest difference. By the time I was 5 years out of school, I already had my college loans paid off.
So, as you start applying for scholarship opportunities, leave no stone unturned. College is a huge and expensive investment. Every little bit of money you can get will help.
