Why Applying for Scholarships Isn’t a Waste of Time

If you took all the students at a high school, you could expect that maybe a handful get full rides, some of them will get partial scholarships for athletics or academics, and half will use FAFSA. You could assume that only a small portion of people actively seek out application based scholarships, and for good reason.

Applying for scholarships is such a pain

There’s just a lot of sources to get scholarship money, which means you have to make an account every time you apply and fill out the same requirements, attach your resume again, write another essay, and repeat. And it isn’t even guaranteed you’ll win. There’s probably a sizable amount of competition for even small scholarships.

It’s still worth it

Think about it, every dollar you make from scholarship money saves that much more with paying off college. There are scholarships that give thousands of dollars, which are extremely appealing, but it also means the application process is probably that much more strict.

But what about smaller scholarships? Let’s say it took you an hour to fill out a no-essay application for even $200; and you win it. You made $200 in just an hour of work (duh). I don’t know about you but it would probably take a couple shifts to make that much if you just tried working during college on top of your classes. Now, obviously you’ll lose more than you win, but you are still making money towards college.

I’ll just worry about money after I graduate and have a job

It may seem scholarship money isn’t significant in the grand scheme of things. Maybe you could only shave off $500 off a $50,000 loan. But those $500 could be the difference between you working overtime or studying those weeks before a final.

Even when you do find a job, you probably will only be making a modest income, most of which will be going towards loans/debts. Why put off problems you know you will encounter for the future when you can start chipping away at the elephant now?

Some tips:

When applying to scholarships, while you should apply to every scholarship you can, take a second to think. You can be at a disadvantage if a scholarship is for a specific reason. Athletics, diversity, or special interests. For example, try avoiding a thousand dollar computer science scholarship when you’ve never studied it.

Like mentioned before, you’ll win more than you lose, but keep your head up, champ.

Works Cited

Clodfelter, Kirsten. “My Small Scholarships Were Actually Really Helpful” College Covered https://www.collegecovered.com/paying-for-college/small-college-scholarships-benefits/

Wignall, Allison. “Myth: Scholarships Take Up Too Much Time and Aren’t Worth the Effort” CollegeRaptor, December 22, 2022 https://www.collegeraptor.com/paying-for-college/articles/myths/myth-scholarships-take-much-time-arent-worth-effort/