Where’s the money for college? Case studies of how students earned big scholarships

Big college scholarships: Do they exist as readily as you might have heard or are they unattainable for the “average” student? I often hear from prospective students and their families who are convinced there aren’t as many scholarships out there as they’ve been told, or they just have no idea how to find them. 

As college-bound high school students finalize their lists and begin the application process, their parents may be left wondering: “Where’s the money for college?” 

One of the places that parents start their search for extra money for college is on websites that provide a list of scholarships, including niche scholarships for things like athletics or particular areas of study.

There are several websites to choose from, and I especially like collegexpress.com for its variety of options. As parents are looking through these options, they may end up thinking, “Wow, we could have been applying for these scholarships a long time ago.” And yes, that’s true! In fact, many there are many scholarship applications available for students as young as 13 years old. 

So parents shouldn’t wait until junior or senior year to start asking “Where’s the money for college scholarships?”

Lottery scholarships.

When I’m counseling students each year, I don’t want families to leave any money on the table. 

Some students apply to these “lottery” scholarships (I refer to them with this term because of the low chances of “winning” the scholarships.) 

When you look at the fine print text of the instructions, you’ll learn that the chances of winning are often based on the number of submissions. These scholarships are indeed quite competitive. Even for a prestigious scholarship like the Coca-Cola Scholarship, there are thousands of students with strong ACT/SAT scores and perfect GPAs.

Instead of putting all your eggs in the outside scholarship basket, students should consider scholarships directly from colleges. That’s where the real big money for college is found. 

Don’t believe me? My students have received scholarship awards ranging from $40,000 to $300,000. These scholarships came directly from their colleges.

Now, let’s go over how they did it. 

How my students earned big scholarships.

Colleges are recruiting students who will contribute to their campus community in a myriad of ways. 

Here are five real-world examples of merit scholarships that my students have received and what they did to earn these awards:

CASE STUDY 1: Scholarship for fine and visual arts. 

To obtain these awards, students submitted a portfolio as part of the application process. Much of their portfolio preparation was completed during the summer before senior year. 

I also encouraged them to attend a National Portfolio Day as a way to get feedback on their portfolios before they submitted it to colleges. Students also took advantage of the National Portfolio Day to learn about potential colleges they wanted to visit. 

The subsequent campus visit reinforced their interest in some colleges and further helped with securing scholarship awards.

By the way, campus visits don’t have to be agonizing for students or their parents. Here are 5 tips for a stress-free campus visit.

CASE STUDY 2: Scholarships to travel abroad. 

There are a number of college scholarships that are posted on a college’s website and listed in my firm’s online portal. 

My students have applied for a number of these scholarships. Several of them have been for travel funds to study abroad. Students submit an essay discussing how they would benefit from traveling abroad as part of the application process. In most cases, these were short essays, which I think are harder to write!
claremont colleges

CASE STUDY 3: Scholarships to do research with faculty mentors. 

There are several colleges that seek students who are interested in research. (One of the colleges that I found particularly advanced in its research scholarship offerings is Clark University.)

My students who received these college scholarships had all demonstrated their interest in research through summer experiences. The summer experiences included working in a laboratory, conducting research through a formal summer program offered at a university, or continuing a project with a high school teacher.

CASE STUDY 4: $100K+ scholarships.  

These awards went to students who expressed interest in a specific department or program featured at that college. 

Students wrote about their interests in supplemental essays and had also demonstrated interest in that particular area through a summer experience. Their interests ranged from departments of business to natural sciences to engineering. 

Several colleges required essays for a particular named niche scholarship and a few offered invitation-only interviews. Colleges are seeking different types of students and will offer niche scholarships to attract THAT student.

Want to learn more about writing essays for college? Don’t miss this podcast where I break down the best practices. 

CASE STUDY 5: Scholarships for being MALE.  

I don’t know how else to say this, but there’s been a trend over the years where my male students get awarded more money. 

This is the only common attribute that I’ve found…some of them didn’t even have the strongest GPA or high school resume. (Go figure, right?) A college admissions officer from a well-known Florida university even stated at a professional conference that:

“We gather all the applications from males first, review their credentials, award scholarships, send their offers and wait on their response. Then we look at the female application pool…Frankly, we need more males on our campuses.”

Yes—I was shocked to hear this too! But the fact that more women are enrolling in college means that a number of campuses have more women. Colleges that seek to reach a 50/50 gender balance will continue to award these scholarships.

Okay, now tell me what you’re thinking. What have you been doing to find more money for college?

Are you looking for one-on-one guidance for how to get into (or pay for) college? Click here for help. 

If you enjoyed this post, don’t miss these either: 

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This article was updated from the original post from 19th September 2016

How The Different College Application Deadlines Can Impact Your Student and Financial Aid

College application deadlines are not the most exciting topic to consider as your teen prepares for college during high school, but it’s a very important topic one. It’s important because it can make a big difference in terms of what you pay for college as well as impact your student’s chances on getting admitted.

Each year there are different application deadlines that your teen can use for their applications for college. They sound similar, so it can be confusing to understand how they are different. I’ll explain how they can impact your teen and their college future.

One of the deadlines is simply the regular decision deadline that happens every year,  usually around January. The thing to remember is that application deadlines are very unforgiving, so your teen needs to make sure that they meet that deadline.

Regular decision is a standard deadline, and another deadline you may hear about is the “rolling deadline”. The rolling deadline means that your teen can submit their application at any time. Usually they’ll get a notice back of a decision about three or four weeks later (but sometimes it could be sooner, depending on the time of year).

The rolling deadline is one that doesn’t have a specific date. So, it could start perhaps as soon as October and keep going until the final deadline, which means that all the applications have to be in by that time. Or it can be set to go as late as the spring of senior year.

Now that we’ve covered standard and rolling deadlines, I want to review two other deadlines that can be a bit confusing because they start with the same word. One of these deadlines is the “early action deadline”. Early action is non-binding, which means that your teen can apply to an early action deadline and usually they’ll find out the decision perhaps around December. It gives them a little bit of ease, especially if they do get admitted, because they’ll know pretty much where their application stands. Then, if they want to apply to some additional colleges, they still have time to do that under the regular deadline.

The fourth deadline I want to talk about also starts with early, and it’s called “early decision deadline”. Early decision is more strict because this deadline is binding. Every year, there are a lot of families that will apply under the early decision deadline. With the early decision deadline, because it’s binding, you cannot apply to any other colleges that have any type of restrictive deadlines. You want to make sure that you read the fine print on that.

The early decision deadline is one that the parents have to sign off on. Also, the school counselor will be notified as well. The key thing with the early decision deadline is that it means that if your teen is admitted, they must go to that college, regardless of financial aid. This is where sometimes I will see families who decide to do the early decision deadline, because that’s the only one that a particular college offers for them (either early decision or regular).

Generally with the earlier application rounds, the admissions rate is a bit more favorable. Families that want to make sure that their teen has the best shot in terms of admissions will often go ahead and exercise that option to use the early decision deadline. But soon after, if the decision comes back positive in December, you have a short window of time to withdraw all of your other applications and to submit your deposit to hold your space.

That’s a really serious deadline. Sometimes families will say, “Oh, I didn’t know. I thought we would be eligible for financial aid.” They get a surprise that they don’t get any additional aid and then it’s trying to figure out, “Okay, how do we pay for it?”

It’s a deadline that I wouldn’t take lightly. It’s certainly your family’s choice if you decide to do the early decision round, but know that it means that your teen will be going if they get admitted, regardless of what the financial aid is.

At least with the early action option, you have a chance to look through the financial aid offers from other colleges as well. On the flipside, some colleges will offer only the early decision deadline, and then others may have an early action, or they can also have an early decision as well. So you want to be sure you know the deadlines for your student’s college of choice when they begin applying!

One thing I will add about the very late regular decision deadlines is that sometimes colleges will say the deadline is June 1st. They will be filling those seats before then,  so for colleges that may have a very late regular decision deadline doesn’t mean that you can apply on May 31st still find seats available. It’s a point to keep that in mind when your student is scheduling when to submit applications.

Do you have questions about application deadlines and helping your student get into their dream school? Application deadlines can make a big difference in terms of what you could end up paying. In some cases, it can also make a difference as to where your teen gets admitted. I look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions or thought about the process!

If you’re a parent of a high school student preparing for college, I have created a free online training class that answers the most common questions I get from parents: “How to Find The Right College.” It offers insight into the college application process as well as how to get money for college. You can check it out and register for it HERE.