Introduction
scholarships are such a powerful way that students can knock off tens of thousands of dollars for their cost of college or maybe even get to a free ride.
we’ll share more about that in just a moment but one of the biggest barriers for students when it comes to getting that free ride or winning scholarships is often their scholarship list.
I would say the majority of the time when I find families where they say my student says that they’re applying to dozens and dozens of scholarships and they’re just not hearing back most of the time.
when I look at the scholarships they’re applying to they are the wrong scholarships so in today’s video I will briefly go over how to build a scholarship list especially for high school students.
Because building that list making sure the right scholarships on are on there making sure we’re doing in the right timing is so important and if we don’t get this right then we can have the best essay and it won’t get us anywhere so if you have a high school student then you need to listen up.
Because this is a critical critical part of your paying for college process now make sure you hit subscribe because every week.
US Citizens Scholarship List
paid to go to college and families have now surpassed over $1.2 million in scholarships so this helped so many families thousands and thousands of families build the best scholarship list for their student now this is focused on US citizens and residents so this is not for international students.
list is important so If briefly touch on this, really if we build a list of 200 scholarships and half of them or more are based on luck or sweep Stakes or they’re just not not legitimate scholarships then we are wasting our time.
Even if they don’t take that long if we’re spending 10 15 20 minutes on each one that adds up to a lot of time so one of the first and most important steps of building a scholarship list is knowing what to look for for a legitimate scholarship.
what to look for for a scam we give you exact examples of this so if you want to register for that you can go to the scholarship system.com free training or you can find the link to all of the resources.
Now in addition to understanding that we are putting legitimate scholarships on our list the next aspect of this is understanding timing so believe it or Timing not scholarships open up as early as August for the following school year.
so say your student is a senior in high school then starting that August September they should already start working on scholarships a lot of families make the mistake of waiting until spring semester now if that’s you then that’s okay.
it’s not too late because that the there are scholarships all the way through the summer months as well but if we wait until spring semester then we just missed out on September through December of scholarship deadlines.
But the good news is that there are scholarship deadlines all throughout the year so we also a lot of students will stop in May but then they’re missing out on June July and potentially August deadlines as well so August is kind of where some people will do last minute deadlines.
How To Apply
some people already start deadlines for the following year now just to prove my point on this in the scholarship system we have given out scholarships every single year for the last eight or nine years since 2025 and deadline is not until July so and that is for money for that fall so that just is a perfect example of a very late deadline.
so we don’t want to stop in May but we also don’t want to wait until spring to start this process then as far as school years our students we need to focus on them no later than junior year if we can but we can continue applying all throughout college.
Believe it or not there are scholarships out there for kids as young as four years old so really it’s never too early to begin this now in the scholarship system it’s based on six steps one of the steps is entirely focused on building the list.
so if you want to learn more about that again check out that free training it’s about 45 minutes of free training and then you’ll learn more about the scholarship system local scholarships will typically be your student will be eligible because they’re local based but also they are typically less competitive.
in fact in a local scholarship they were giving out four Awards they had they were giving out two Awards they had four applicants and so they actually reach out to the donors asked them to rematch whatever they donated doubled the amount and gave all four of us a scholarship.
so it was literally a 100% success rate as long as you submitted an application this is what I love about local scholarships.
The previous year saying they didn’t get any applicants do you need more money and of course the answer is yes and so they just got a scholarship without even applying.
Local Scholarship
Now when we’re talking about looking local we’re talking about credit unions Banks doctor’s offices lawyers offices you can even look at construction companies a great way to do this is to think of places that you go to and ask them if they offer scholarships.
in that free training so a lot of times organizations will send the guidance office scholarships a lot of times nowadays they the office will put them on to their website or inside Naviance or Blackboard or whatever it is that you all use to manage your students homework and assignments and stuff but sometimes they don’t do that they’ll just throw.
they’ll print it out and throw it in a manila folder inside a filing cabinet so I actually always tell our students to go into the guidance office and ask about scholarships another cool way to build a list is Commencement books.
Actually to look at the previous commencement announcements or the commencement book where it lists all the scholarships that the seniors received.
so we can do this as a senior from this previous year if you can get your hands on it but if you have a student that’s a junior then this upcoming year with the graduations grab one of those so that you know where to look for next fall now.
Passion and interests
Another way to build a list is to do searches based on your students passions and activities again we cover that in detail in that free training and then lastly there are tons of lists online now we actually am a more of a fan of a updated list as say a blog post which you would find on our website I’ll give you a link in just a second but versus say the big search engines a lot of times the search engines have those sweepstake scholarships that are based on luck so we just have to be careful on what we’re putting on our list but we are in December.
December list
For students to apply to over their break now just know it will take more time to sift through these lists but that is what makes them less competitive because a lot of students are not willing to do.
That it’s why we have an entire step dedicated just to building a legitimate list because if your student is applying to ones that are not legitimate or are based on luck or are just scams then they’re wasting their time and what’s going to happen is they will get just frustrated.
They will think that scholarships aren’t a real thing they won’t be willing to do the work anymore and they’ll just be burnt out and we won’t get any money for college that’s not what we want to happen instead we want them to get a win get that taste of the money see that it’s possible,
so that they really get that fire under their butt and they keep on applying so this is why it’s critical that when we’re applying to scholarships we make sure they are legitimate we make sure their timing is right we make sure the list is quality this is what we teach at the scholarship system again but this is so important to to build a foundation for your Student Success with scholarships all right again.