Favorite Things: Scholarships

One past STES student's family insisted upon hiring a private consultant to search for scholarships. While this sounds like a good idea, the way this student used that resource actually may have hindered the search for scholarships. This student chose to ignore all other scholarship opportunities and notices save those the consultant provided, so the student ended up missing out on the scholarships I emailed about in my weekly emails. For example, there are a few scholarships out there that are by nomination only or allow only one applicant per school, so I will email all senior students and families and solicit nominations on a first-come, first-served basis. It was striking that every time that student came to me to request a transcript for a scholarship the consultant had suggested, the scholarship in hand was one that I had emailed about two weeks before, and for which I had already nominated another student. It turned out that the consultant and I were on all the same mailing lists--I just happened to get the information out sooner than she did.

As many of you know, I send out a weekly counseling newsletter to all seniors and their parents. This newsletter contains notes on upcoming college visits, upcoming workshops on campus, looming deadlines, and, most notably, information on new scholarships. I get a lot of scholarship fliers in the mail, and I always digitize them and email them to families in the weekly counseling newsletter. I also keep the hard copies in my office for students to peruse, if they are so inclined. I've found that this is a helpful way to get out information, and I'm always open to new suggestions if there's a better way to disseminate such information.

In general, I think it's a little sketchy to pay to receive a scholarship--the point is that you should be the one receiving money, right? The three best scholarship search sites that I know of are reputable and free: they are scholarships.com, fastweb.com, and zinch.com. Simply visit these sites, fill out a profile about yourself, and you'll get a list of scholarships for which you are eligible. Apply to those that interest you and can be done in reasonably short order; avoid the ones that will take an eon to fill out.