Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Value of Winning a Scholarship

I am still feeling very sad about an email I received today from a student who shared that applying for a $500 scholarship was not worth the effort of completing the application.  It just happened that there were five $500 scholarships and the odds were in favor of winning.  

Once your portfolio is complete, applying for the average scholarship should not take more than twenty minutes to fill out the basic information.  In your portfolio, you have several letters of recommendation, several versions of your personal essay, transcripts and all of the necessary information to submit your WINNING scholarship application.  

If you have a minimum wage job and you are working part time, are you earning $500 (after taxes) a month? There are many people who are working full time at back breaking jobs who do not earn $500 easily. Please, please rethink the value of winning scholarships!!  Your completed portfolio is your path to graduating debt free.  Believe that you deserve to be awarded scholarships and know that "small" scholarships are easier to win because many students want the "big dollars".  Receiving many of the small scholarships quickly adds up to a lot of money.

You know, growing up in a poor immigrant family, I'm still conscious of living without and the value of money.  So much so that I still stop to pick up a penny if I see it lying on the ground.  Five hundred dollars, to me, still sounds like a lot of money.  Please realize that even a $100 scholarship is worth the effort of applying.   

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