Imagine someone stood in front of you and handed you $1,000 with no catch. Would you take it? Of course you would! It is almost impossible to pass down free money. That is what scholarships are all about – free money. It may seem tedious to spend a couple of hours writing an essay bragging about yourself, but it is worth it to put the work in to earn hundreds to even thousands of dollars. In honor of November being National Scholarship Month, here are a variety of scholarship resources.
College Board is a great resource to find and apply for over 23,000 scholarships. They have Big Future Scholarships, which require no essays nor a minimum GPA. These are the six qualifying steps to complete on College Board:
- Start your college list
- Add three or more schools to your list
- Closes June of your junior year
- Start your career list
- Take the career quiz and add three or more careers to your list
- Closes February of your senior year
- Start your scholarship list
- Add three or more scholarships that you qualify for to your list
- Closes February of your senior year
- Strengthen your college list
- Make sure you have added three reach colleges, two match colleges and one safety college to your college list
- Closes October of your senior year
- Complete the FAFSA
- Verify that you completed the FAFSA form
- Closes February of your senior year
- Apply to colleges
- Verify what colleges you applied to
- Closes February of your senior year
These steps you take enter you in monthly drawings for either a $500 or $40,000 scholarship. Winners are drawn each month to the February of your senior year. The more steps you complete, the more monthly drawings you can enter. If your family earns less than $60,000 a year, then you have double the chances of winning the drawings. If you still have questions about how to enter these scholarships, check out the College Board website.
In addition to these Big Future Scholarships, College Board has a scholarship search resource. You can filter scholarships by location, academic stage, GPA, scholarship type, degree level, fields of study and/or college choice. These scholarships are a great mix of need-based, merit-based and essay and no essay requirements, so you are guaranteed to find a large variety of scholarships fit for you.
The LHS counseling website is another great resource to find scholarships. Scholarship information can be found under the senior tab and there are a handful of nationwide scholarship sites and South Dakota scholarship sites.
If you have a general idea of what colleges you want to go to, college websites have a great deal of information regarding scholarships specific to that school. These colleges offer full-ride scholarships, although most of these deadlines have passed.
Here are a couple of other scholarships. Some of these have due dates have already passed or will pass soon, but if you are a junior, you can keep these in mind for next year:
- Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation
- Due date: Usually around the end of September to the beginning of October
- Eligibility:
- Currently enrolled in high school
- Must be a U.S. Citizen, U.S. National, U.S. Permanent Resident, refugee, asylee, Cuban-Haitian, Entrant or Humanitarian Parolee
- Must maintain a 3.0 GPA
- Expecting to receive a high school diploma during your current academic year
- Planning to receive a degree at a U.S. post-secondary institution
- Essay?: Yes, but not in the first round
- Amount: $20,000
- Other info: The website contains a lot of additional information about other scholarships to apply for, so this website is worth checking out.
- NHS Scholarship
- Due date: Nov. 26. 2024
- Eligibility:
- High school senior and/or expecting to receive a high school diploma in the current school year
- An NHS member
- Planning to receive a degree at a U.S. post-secondary institution
- Essay?: Yes
- Amount: $3,200-$25,000
- Other info: N/A
- Check with your parent’s financial institution as many of them offer scholarships, and many of these deadlines are not until the spring of 2025
