How to Find Scholarships Worth Your Time
Most scholarship searching is wasted effort spent in the wrong places. A smaller, closer search usually pays better than a national one.
By College Path HubPublished Last reviewed
There is a particular kind of afternoon that many students lose: a scholarship search site, hundreds of results, an hour of scrolling, and nothing applied for. The problem is not effort. It is that the search starts in the place with the worst odds.
Where the money actually comes from
Colleges themselves give away the most. Institutional grant aid dwarfs private scholarships, and you apply for most of it by applying to the college and filing the financial aid forms. Nothing on a scholarship search site competes with getting this right.
Then comes federal and state aid, which again comes from the forms rather than from an essay competition.
Private scholarships are third, and national ones are the hardest part of that third. A famous award with a $20,000 prize attracts tens of thousands of applicants. A local one worth $1,000 might attract eleven.
The odds argument for going local
A national scholarship is competing with the whole country. A scholarship from your parent's employer, your town's rotary club, a local credit union, a community foundation or a regional trade association is competing with the handful of people who qualify and noticed.
Four $1,000 local awards are the same money as one $4,000 national one, and are usually far more winnable. They are also less advertised, which is exactly why they stay winnable.
Places worth asking, in rough order of how often they are overlooked:
- Your school counsellor, who often keeps a list nobody asks for
- Your parents' employers, and their unions if they have one
- Local community foundations, which exist in most counties
- Civic groups: Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, Lions, VFW posts
- Your intended field's professional association, which frequently funds students
- The financial aid office of every college you are applying to
Spend your effort where it converts
Rewriting one essay for twelve applications is how most people do this, and it is usually why most people lose. Read what each award says it is for. An award funded in memory of a nurse is looking for something specific; a generic essay tells them you did not look.
A reasonable approach with limited time: apply to fewer awards, more carefully, weighted towards ones where you fit the description unusually well.
Two rules that never change
Never pay to apply. A legitimate scholarship does not charge a fee, does not ask for a bank account or Social Security number up front, and does not guarantee you will win. How to spot a scholarship scam covers the rest.
Tell your college what you won. Outside awards can change your institutional aid package, sometimes reducing it. That is not a reason to skip them, but it is a reason to ask the financial aid office how they treat outside scholarships before you count the money.
Start here
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