Increase your Chance Winning a Scholarship
While some scholarship winners are chosen at random in what is called a scholarship lottery, merit scholarships are those where your application is judged and the winner is chosen based on the impression they have made on the judges.
Start Your Search Early
If you plan on attending college straight out of high school, make sure you begin searching for scholarships during your sophomore year. Why so early? Many scholarships have prerequisites, meaning you need to have taken certain classes, been active in an extracurricular activity for so many years and have done community service or what have you in order to qualify. If you haven’t done any of this and it’s spring of your senior year, you can kiss many scholarship opportunities goodbye. By searching early, you give yourself an idea of what’s out there and allow yourself enough time to prepare for it.
Make Sure You Qualify
When it comes time to apply to scholarships, make sure that you actually qualify for them. There is nothing worse than wasting your time on a scholarship, writing an essay and submitting it only to find out you never qualified for it to begin with. This is also why it’s beneficial to search early for scholarships. If your GPA doesn’t quite make the cut in your sophomore year, you have plenty of time to raise it in time to apply.
Don’t Go Where the Competition Is
It may seem as though applying for the hottest and most in demand scholarships is the way to go, however, you set yourself up for disappointment this way. Those in demand scholarships are going to have a lot of applicants, which means you have a decreased chance of winning. Why not concentrate your efforts on scholarships that are not as well known but still offer great payouts? Local scholarships are a great place to start. However, if you meet all of the requirements for a national scholarship and the prompt speaks to you, by all means apply. Just be prepared to acknowledge the fact that the competition is tougher and you may not win.
Write a Killer Essay
This is probably the most important aspect of winning a merit scholarship. Writing an essay that impresses the judges can be difficult, but taking the time to do so is well worth it if you receive an award check afterward! The key to a stand out essay is the ability to stay on topic, stay focused and to make the topic interesting. The judges will be reading essay after essay on the same topic, no doubt, so they’re bound to get a little bored. However, if your essay is unique and engaging, you may very well win. Be sure to read about how to write a scholarship essay to increase your chances.
Be Prepared For An Interview
Before you submit your applications, make sure you realize that you may need to be interviewed by the scholarship committee. For some academic scholarships or merit scholarships, especially those with high payouts, require a sit-down, face-to-face interview with the finalists in order to determine who is the most deserving of the award. Being nervous is one thing, but being entirely unprepared is another. Make sure if you get called in for an interview that you practice your scholarship interview skills and that you are comfortable with the topic of your essay. Review your application and keep a copy for yourself. That way, there are no big surprises when you go into the meeting room.
Be Yourself
Last, and probably most important, be yourself. It may be tempting to hype yourself up on the application and in your essay, but all of the fluff will be blown away if you get called in for an interview. After all, the judges will be evaluating your application, not you, so it is in your best interest to infuse your application with as much of “you” as possible. The interview should merely confirm what the judges already thought about you, not change their minds entirely.
And there you have it. With a lot of determination and a little bit of luck, you will be on your way to funding your college education with free college scholarship money!