8/9/2019 What Parents and Students Should Know About Private Scholarships

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A few days ago, the parent of a local high school student asked me at one of my workshops if her student

was on the right track applying to scholarships. She explained that her daughter devotes 10 to 15 hours per week indentifying the most lucrative scholarships online and applies to the ones she qualifies for.

Some of these scholarships require multiple essays, multiple recommendation letters, a resume, officialtranscripts and a student interview. She said they applied to about seven good scholarships per week.

I first congratulated her on raising and nurturing such a motivated student and told her that I wasextremely impressed with the drive, however although they were putting a tremendous effort intoapplying for scholarships, their efforts are not likely to produce the end result that they are actuallylooking for.

The truth is that her daughter was not applying to anywhere near the amount of scholarships that sheneeded to ensure that they were going to have enough money to go to the list of schools her daughter 

wanted to attend.

Her response was, ³How? She has class work and AP exams. She¶s the president of two school clubs.She¶s on the cross country team. She needs time to improve her SAT scores and fill out the college

applications.´

I still remember the frustration. And I¶ll admit this student is far above average and extremely motivated.

Sadly, students and parents like this will often have all the ambition, work fiercely, but lack basic

information they need to accomplish their goals. I completely understand.

Here is my answer this question: first, I do encourage applying to private scholarships, especially fromlocal foundations. A private scholarship is free money awarded to a student by a non-profit organization,

 business, trust or estate. On the contrary, I do notice that many families get caught into the common pitfall of thinking that a private scholarship is the key to making college affordable for the family and

devote far too much time to it. Everyone thinks that because they¶re applying to countless scholarships,

they¶re bound to get enough money for college if they just apply to enough of them.

In my opinion private scholarships are not the best places to start when looking free money for college. If you consider all the sources, you¶ll notice most of the money comes from the federal and state

government and the colleges. In fact only 5-7% of all free money given out college bound studentscomes from private scholarships.

1 

The federal government disbursed over 19 billion dollars in grants for higher education last year.2 Thecolleges also typically award between 14 and 23 billion dollars each year to students from their own

endowment funds3, and the State of California awards another one billion dollars in Cal Grants each year 

to students going to schools in California.4 

1 Institute for Higher Education Policy, & Scholarship America National Providers Association. (2005).

 Private Scholarships Count: Access to Higher Education and the Critical Role of the Private Sector.Institute for Higher Education Policy. Retrieved July 12, 2010, from

www.scholarshipproviders.org/Documents/PrivateScholCount.pdf   2 U.S. Dept. of Education. (2009).  Federal Student Aid's FY 2009 Annual Report. Washington, DC:http://www.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/index.html3 Donald E. Heller, Institutional and State Merit Aid: Implications for Students, Unpublished paper 

 presented at the University of Southern California Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice,

Los Angeles, CA, August, 2008.4

California Student Aid Commission. (2010). 2009-10 CAL Grant Recipients and Dollars

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Fasteweb.com, which is the top source for online scholarships, advertises only 3.3 billion dollars inscholarships on their site. And so many families fight over that 5-7% of the pie, when there are so many

 places to get the money they need to send their child for college. Furthermore, many of the privatescholarships are not four year awards or do not nearly cover the cost of attendance at any college.

If you¶re applying to private scholarships because you think the federal government, colleges and theState of California categorize you as high income, I still suggest you reassess your situation because thisis probably not true. And even if your family is very affluent there are still better ways to use your time toget more money for college.

What is the alternative? Instead of budgeting all this time finding and applying to private scholarshipsonline, budget some of that time to finding schools that are generous with financial aid.

We¶ll discuss more next week.

by California Legislative District . Rancho Cordova, CA:http://www.csac.ca.gov/pubs/forms/grnt_frm/2009-10_CalGrantsbyCAlegislativedistrict.pdf