Why You Should Have a Favorite Amendment & Other Scholarship Tips

Why You Should Have a Favorite Amendment & Other Scholarship Tips

Why You Should Have a Favorite Amendment & Other Scholarship Tips | brokeGIRLrich

I have to admit that I was a pretty lazy scholarship searcher throughout my time in college.  And I still wound up graduating with 75% of college covered. I’m not gonna lie, part of it is that I had the skills and grades to turn into scholarships, but mostly it was just a little half-assed application of effort. And this is my story of how half-assing something got me $500 a semester for all of undergrad:

            Flashback to the winter of 2000. I was actually a Junior and in one of my AP classes, one of the Seniors was talking about an oratorical contest they were applying to do in about two weeks with the local American Legion chapter. I can’t remember if Google was a verb yet, but I recall Asking Jeeves later on that evening about this scholarship and it turned out any high school student could apply for it – not just Seniors. I literally have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea, as public speaking was not remotely my thing, but before thinking it through, I printed out and sent in my entry to the competition. And then I forgot about it.

I abruptly recalled that I had entered it 24 hours before the competition, when the same Senior who had initially mentioned it, spent our lab period that morning practicing his speech while he cut up his pig. I’m pretty sure my exact thoughts where a couple of colorful swear words and then I proceeded to cut the new few classes to go to “band lessons” (sorry any teachers reading this, if you suspected that band lessons were often a lie – they usually were. Not always, but usually), which was actually hiding in the library desperately trying to write a 7-10 minute speech about My Favorite Amendment. Do you have any idea how long 7 minutes is? Good golly.

Come the next morning, I get to the school auditorium and start milling around, wondering how the heck I’m ever going to stretch my aimless ramblings about the free exercise of religion. I go up to check in and realize there don’t seem to be that many people there. Then I get issued my number – 3 – and get directed to go sit in an area with the other orators.

So I go sit with these other 2 guys and no one else appears. Which seems pretty awesome to me, since in the back of my mind I recalled there were scholarships for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.  Then the dreaded 4th joins us. We all go up and do our speeches – fortunately for me, number 2 was not that smart and actually talked about stuff that had nothing to do with anyone’s favorite Amendment – or an Amendment at all. This took off a lot of the pressure as it now looked like I was actually going to pull this off and get some kind of scholarship from this mess. I went up, made it to 7 minutes talking about who knows what not, and walked away with 2nd place and $500 a semester from the local American Legion.

The point of the story is that sometimes it’s worth it to apply even if you’re unsure, because the competition may not be up for it. I also noticed that if you have to do anything other than send in an essay, that alone cuts the competition in half – I mean, in a school of close to 1,000, 4 people showed up for an oratorical contest.

However, so I don’t end this story on the note that you should be a total slacker, the 1st place winner got to go onto the county competition to compete for a much higher scholarship, and that winner kept moving up and so on and so forth. Our 1st place winner had a conflict the day of the county competition, so I go to tapped to go. Suffice to say that utter lack of preparation does not cut it at the county level and I looked like number 2 that day. So, you know, always do your best. I did not get any scholarships from there.

Duct Tape Scholarship

If you’re ok with going to your prom wearing duct tape, this could net you some cash. Back in my day, we only had the gray stuff. You kids these days, you don’t know how lucky you’ve got it when you’re wearing your colorful duct tape.

If you’re looking for scholarships, here are a few tips I remember from my scholarship searching days, which were both kind of long ago and not so long ago, because there are scholarships and research grants for grad school too, my friends.

*High school kids should buddy up to their guidance counselors. We actually had a secretary who was solely responsible for college related matters. I got to know her after this American Legion debacle. Seriously, I should’ve introduced myself as a freshman and told her I’d love to know if she ever hears about scholarships that are open to any high school student. That same secretary would compile a list of scholarships, both gigantic, national ones like the Coca-Cola scholarship and itty, bitty ones like the local American Legion oratorical contest once a month and print out packets that you could swing by her office and pick up. They had all the info on how to enter. The main benefit of these packets was the local scholarships – a surprising number of local companies would contact her, so she was definitely the best resource for finding them. If you’re unsure if such a person exists at your school, ask your guidance counselor, they should get paid to know this stuff.

*Make a list of every skill you have, right down to the weird ones like you can touch your nose with your tongue or speak Klingon. Then add your ethnicity or nationality and anything else that sets you apart (seriously, I was born with one hand, you want to know the only time in my life I’ve ever tried to leverage that? College scholarships. Oh, and climbing that rope in gym class growing up. I wasn’t having any of that). Once you have that list, Google ‘“Klingon fluency” scholarship’ ‘”I can touch my nose with my tongue” scholarship’ because honestly, you never know what’s gonna pop up. And when you have really specific requirements to scholarships that you actually fit, that narrows your competition considerably. Like every college kid in America is going to throw their hat into the ring for the Coca-Cola scholarship. Four kids are going to give a speech about their favorite Amendment (well, 3 Amendment speeches and 1 crazy rambling).

*Contact the HR departments of large companies in your city or where your parents work and ask if they have an scholarships for high school students. I grew up near Merck and they had a pretty good sized scholarship available to kids who were going into science fields (which as we’ve ascertained, was not me).

*Spend some time searching the web in general. There are some very large scholarship websites out there. It’s easy to get bogged down in them, but the same rules apply as I’ve written above – if they have very narrow requirements or ask you to do something weird (a friend of mine built a diorama – do people even still do that?? – for a scholarship from a nearby museum and she was the only one who even turned something in, kaching for her) go for it! I would also usually go for it if the scholarship amount was huge too and the requirements weren’t too crazy – I mean, someone’s got to win it, right (that someone was never me)?

*After you peruse the larger sites and look through a few scholarships, you’ll probably notice that a lot of them ask for the same sort of essays. If you build up a small pile of 3-4 generic essays that answer those questions that can be just slightly tailored for each scholarship, you can apply for a lot of the big ones with minimal effort. I’m not advocating skimping on all your applications, but I sort of considered these filler. There are a LOT of scholarships from big companies or organizations that want to know about an event that made you the person you are today or about how you’re going to change the world. They all want to know exactly the same dang thing. So you might was well tell them exactly the same dang thing. I really feel like your just essentially entering a lottery with these scholarships. There’s no way they read all the entries. If it were me, I’d just randomly pull them out of a pile and read until I found one that impressed me. Huzzah. Winner. Probably good that I don’t decide who gets scholarships…

*My last bit of advice is to always check out scholarship packages at the schools you apply to. I actually wound up picking a school that gave you a nearly automatic scholarship if you were in a certain percentage of your class and had a certain SAT score. There was just a chart they looked at and that was how much money you got. It endlessly annoyed my good friend that I went to college with from high school that I got more money than she did, because my SAT score destroyed hers, even though we both finished in the top 10% of our class – I was way at the bottom of that 10% and she was our valedictorian.

*I lied – one more bit – once you’re in college, there is often another office, just like in high school, where you can find someone who keeps track of the scholarships and often knows where you can apply for more. For instance, an incoming freshman might not have a major decided, but once you do, you may be able to apply for scholarships from that department. Personally, I wound up with an extra scholarship from my department and then one from an outside theater by the time I finished college.

If you’re still looking for more tips on how to get through college debt free, enter to win a copy of Debt-Free U by Zac Bissonette, someone who walked the walk before talking the talk. Contest ends 1/31.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is linked up at Financially Savvy Saturdays. If you’re a personal finance blogger, link up your best post of week every Saturday at www.FemmeFrugality.com:

Femme Frugality

10 thoughts on “Why You Should Have a Favorite Amendment & Other Scholarship Tips

  1. I could probably talk about freedom of religion for half an hour on the fly, in fact, I probably have 🙂 As for scholarships, I was lucky. In my town there was an umbrella organization for all the scholarships available. I filled out the application (last minute of course) then got called in to interview for the panel of representatives from all the separate scholarship funds. I then had a few individual follow ups. I wound up getting a few thousand dollars of my tuition covered.
    Stefanie @ The Broke and Beautiful Life recently posted…Shake Your Money Maker: Taking ActionMy Profile

    • That is awesome! In college there was an umbrella organization for a large group of scholarships and when I sent in the general application, I wound up actually winning one I had no idea existed previously. I wish we’d had that in high school.

    • I definitely think they should start looking now! I don’t know that they have to put a ton of effort in yet, but like a once a month Google of “scholarships for any age” will point them to stuff they could be applying for now, and seeing if there is someone with a position like the college guidance counselor at their school and making sure your kids get to know them a little couldn’t hurt either.

  2. Yes! Scholarships are so important and so few people apply for them. now, it’s much easier to find them. No real internet when I was coming up. Thanks for sharing.

  3. These are great tips. I remember my counselor told us about ones that we should apply for, which was a huge help. I guess back then I wasn’t much into doing research online much. It’s so much out there though now and that is something kids should definitely look out for. The nice thing is if you are a good student, you may walk away with scholarships you didn’t apply for based on what your intended major is and your grades which is what happened to me. If I was smart, I would have put the money that I was awarded in an account waiting to pay for the rest of college when I did finally have to start paying, but I was simple and not grounded. Thanks for sharing these awesome tips with us at Countdown in Style! Don’t forget to stop by to see if you are featured on Friday!
    Brittnei recently posted…Whole Wheat Mac-N-CheeseMy Profile

  4. Pingback: Fabulously Frugal Linky 51 - Real: The Kitchen and Beyond

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge