Any luck with external scholarships?

[Anonymous]

Most of the scholarships on the scholarship sites look like lotteries.

Has anyone’s student had luck with local scholarships? Are the ones on the big sites worth the time for the essays?

[Anonymous]

lotteries for very specific groups

[Anonymous]

My two DC had a very high success rate applying for very local scholarships. So the target audience was pretty small to begin with.

1. Local Rotary club. Reside within a couple of zip codes and had to be an Eagle Scout. $2000. Found the scholarship via the school's Naviance database.
2. Local Chamber of Commerce. Reside within the chamber's zip code. $1500. A member of the CofC told DC about the scholarship.
3. Local youth athletic rec league. Current participant. $1500. We've known about it for years because DC played in the league.
4. High school PTSA. Be a member of the PTSA. $250. I am a member of the PTSA so I knew about the scholarship.
5. Our local church. This one was a slam dunk - every graduating senior who was going on to some type of higher education (college, trade school) and applied for the scholarship was awarded $150. Again, being members of the church, we knew about the scholarship.

All of the above scholarships required an essay answering very specific questions. There was no way my DC could reuse/rewrite one essay. For example, the Rotary one wanted to know why you chose your Eagle Scout project. And the athletic rec league wanted to know what lessons you learned from participating in the league. My oldest did apply to a couple of other local scholarships that he did not get. And at the end of the day, the money they received was not significant. There were several other local scholarships that we found via Naviance but I couldn't get my DC to write any more essays. Neither one of my DC applied to any large target audience scholarship - they both figured the chances of getting one that thousands were applying for were so slim it wasn't worth their time.

[Anonymous]

My current senior has received:

$1000 from one

$4500 from a second one

$1000 from a third

Los of no's and several are still outstanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My two DC had a very high success rate applying for very local scholarships. So the target audience was pretty small to begin with.

1. Local Rotary club. Reside within a couple of zip codes and had to be an Eagle Scout. $2000. Found the scholarship via the school's Naviance database.
2. Local Chamber of Commerce. Reside within the chamber's zip code. $1500. A member of the CofC told DC about the scholarship.
3. Local youth athletic rec league. Current participant. $1500. We've known about it for years because DC played in the league.
4. High school PTSA. Be a member of the PTSA. $250. I am a member of the PTSA so I knew about the scholarship.
5. Our local church. This one was a slam dunk - every graduating senior who was going on to some type of higher education (college, trade school) and applied for the scholarship was awarded $150. Again, being members of the church, we knew about the scholarship.

All of the above scholarships required an essay answering very specific questions. There was no way my DC could reuse/rewrite one essay. For example, the Rotary one wanted to know why you chose your Eagle Scout project. And the athletic rec league wanted to know what lessons you learned from participating in the league. My oldest did apply to a couple of other local scholarships that he did not get. And at the end of the day, the money they received was not significant. There were several other local scholarships that we found via Naviance but I couldn't get my DC to write any more essays. Neither one of my DC applied to any large target audience scholarship - they both figured the chances of getting one that thousands were applying for were so slim it wasn't worth their time.

How many were applied for? How much is tuition next year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My current senior has received:

$1000 from one

$4500 from a second one

$1000 from a third

Los of no's and several are still outstanding.

Oh I actually forgot some kid reminded me of bc they paid out when kid was a junior and/or directly to kid:

$2500
$250
$300
$1000

[Anonymous]

My good stats kid applied for more than 50 scholarships online last year. Got none.

Instead, we still keep receiving spam emails about scholarship opportunities from those websites.