Scholarship Stories: A Little Time Can Go a Long Way

Setting aside time to search for scholarships online can make all the difference. (Photo courtesy Ambro)

There are scholarships for almost everything. If you’re a girl over 5’9”, a weightlifter with a stellar GPA or even just a squirrel-lover (squirrels are known to award students $10 plus three walnuts), there’s probably a scholarship out there to help get you through college.

Kidding about the squirrels, but the rest is true. It’s spending the time to find, apply, interview-and actually spending that time-that’s tough.

When I was headed off to school, I knew I couldn’t afford to go out of state unless I had some significant scholarship money, or else I couldn’t go without equally significant student loans. And I really, really wanted to leave the state. Hoping to avoid crushing debt, I spent many weekends looking for and applying for money. Ten years later, the Internet makes it light-years easier than I had it, but it’s still a chore, I know.

Think about it, though. Giving up a couple evenings and weekends (even with everything else going on, like celebrating the end of high school), can be worth thousands of dollars. Everyone’s heard stories about super-persistent gifted scholars getting their whole college bill taken care of via small donations and gifts. But while it would be nice to have a free ride, that’s realistically not going to happen for most students. It does happen for a few though, so it never hurts to apply. They can’t give it to you if you don’t ask!

I remember the frustration in looking through stacks of applications at the guidance counselor’s office and not being qualified to even apply. However, the ones I did find and apply for (anything that was nonspecific about gender, race and parental income was golden) was great experience for honing my resume-writing and interviewing skills. I got an interview with three members of the Arvada Rotary Club on the morning of my graduation party. I didn’t get the money, but it prepared me to go with the flow in tough interview situations.

My search wasn’t totally fruitless, though. Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of Missouri (my top two out-of-state picks with similar tuition), both presented me with the same school-specific scholarship. Thank you, but that didn’t make my decision easier! ASU’s in particular came with guidelines. I would have to keep a 3.5 GPA and volunteer 20 hours per semester in the community. But they were offering me $16,000 total and the chance to get a college degree, relatively debt-free. And while my choice of schools was more complicated than simple dollars and cents, it was the window of opportunity I needed. I took the cash and headed down to the sunny desert in Arizona.

And my scholarship experience didn’t end with freshman orientation. ASU provided an online form for applying for all the scholarships available to journalism students. All you had to do was fill out your basic information each semester, and the people donating would pick you if you met their criteria. Relatively stress-free, I got a couple more thousand dollars that way. Remember, it never hurts to ask!

Again, even though a lot of the time spent looking for and applying for scholarships didn’t directly give me any cash, the experience of honing my application and interview skills ended up being worth thousands in the long run.

You never stop having to apply for things, whether it’s more scholarships down the road for graduate school or the sometimes-endless search for gainful employment during and after school. Why not learn now how to best present your accolades and merits now?

This article is part of the BetterGrads special series “Scholarship Stories.” Contributors are asked to tell their personal experience with scholarship searches, applications and opportunities. If you’d like to submit an article for this series, please read our editorial guidelines and let us know here.