How do scholarships work

All kinds of students win scholarships! They study different things, come from different states, and are all kinds of ethnicities. Check out some scholarship winners and their winning essays here. Just answer 7 quick questions. No sign-up required. Back to all posts. How Do Scholarships Work? Kelly Lamano. Categories: Applying for Scholarships. Jump to:. What are scholarships? How do they work? Who can apply for scholarships? Where do I find scholarships to apply for? How do I apply for scholarships?

What are common scholarship essay questions? Where do I go from here? Are scholarships free? Can scholarships be used for anything, including room and board? Will scholarships pay for housing? What about studying abroad? Do outside scholarships affect financial aid? Can you apply for too many scholarships? Do scholarships count as income? Can scholarships awards be taxed? Next up, we'll take a look at athletic scholarships to find out whether all that practice you did on your high school bowling team can help you pay for school.

Unlike the individual scholarships we just discussed, which usually come from outside sources, most money for athletic scholarships comes directly from the schools' athletic departments.

Universities budget a certain amount of money for attracting top athletes, and athletic grants exist for all kinds of sports, not just basketball and football. There are literally hundreds of athletic grants for golf, for instance, plus many more for uncommon sports, such as fencing and water polo. Coppin State University in Maryland even offers a grant for weight lifting. Athletics at the university level in the United States are divided into three divisions.

Division I, which mostly includes large schools with intense sports culture, offers the most money to their athletes, but also demands the most time and commitment in return. Division II sports are mostly smaller schools with less money for a large athletics program but still playing at a highly competitive level. Division II athletes are more likely to get supplementary scholarships rather than free rides, but there's also less pressure on the field. Finally, Division III sports have the least funding and don't award athletics scholarships.

Financial aid packages can be more generous for athletes applying at Division III schools, but in general, Division III athletes are in it for the love of the game. The application process for a sports scholarship is a little different from other scholarships, partly because coaches are actively interested in recruiting new and talented athletes.

Rather than waiting for applicants, every year coaches send out mass recruitment mailings to players who appear in all-regional rankings national lists. Many athletes get recruited just by writing a letter to a coach at the school of their choice or sending in a performance DVD. However, there are many factors that go into the selection process for an athletic scholarship. Colleges look not only for talent on the field, but for players who will excel academically.

Many incoming athletes end up having to adjust their expectations when they find they're no longer big fish in small ponds. It's not uncommon for freshman to be benched for an entire year to train while they wait for a spot to open up on the starting lineup. Forty years ago, only 1 in 27 girls played high school sports.

College athletics for women were few and far between, not to mention athletic scholarships and funding. Title IX, which was passed in , leveled the playing field by requiring that athletics money be split equally between men's and women's sports.

In many cases, this meant cutting men's programs to enforce fairness, especially in Division I schools that were heavily invested in high-profile college sports like football and basketball. In order for someone to give you money for school, you must be doing at least something well.

Merit scholarships are the ones that come to mind when you think of the general idea of a scholarship -- the money awarded to the girl who got a perfect SAT score, the class president who's also a virtuoso violinist or the boy who spends 30 hours per week working in a soup kitchen.

These scholarships are for the leaders of tomorrow: the brilliant, the talented, the dedicated and, occasionally, the cutthroat. There are two reasons merit-based scholarships are awarded. The first is to recognize that the most talented people aren't necessarily going to come from socioeconomic backgrounds that can afford the best education. Merit-based scholarships offer an opportunity for truly talented minds to blossom rather than to just slip through the cracks.

As former Vice President Dan Quayle once famously said on the subject, "What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind. Merit-based scholarships also benefit the community. We all win out when the math genius is working on theorems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology instead of mopping the floors. Wasted talent isn't just something that hurts individuals -- it hurts the community when people aren't living up to their potential. States, for instance, all offer merit-based scholarships for in-state students as a way to make sure that the talent stays at home, and businesses offer merit-based scholarships partly to foster a strong relationship with incoming talent.

There are literally tens of thousands of merit-based scholarships out there. Others, like the Arts Recognition and Talent Search and Project Imagine, award money based on potential and exceptional talent in the fine arts.

Finally, there are thousands of contests that award scholarships. These, however, can be the most competitive. But wait. How does that scholarship money actually get used? Yes, those are both real scholarships. Google them. What about actually landing one? Rebecca recommends starting the application process the summer after your Junior year of high school.

Applying for scholarship after scholarship can be long and grueling, and the worst part is every scholarship is a little different. Most require essays, many require letters of recommendation, and some require even more work beyond even that. You need a plan. She treated it like a job. No matter how long it took, her responsibility was to apply for 3 scholarships every Friday night.

The best way for the modern student to apply for scholarships is to use any of the million and one scholarship search engines that populate the web. So save yourself the headache by sticking with just one or two. This site has you complete a general questionnaire when you set up your profile. Based on your answers, it will filter your view of the 1.

Setting up the account is easy. Your teachers and friends are busy people, and they may not have the time or brain space to write five reference letters for you. Take the lead and make the process easy for everyone: ask your reference-givers to each write a single letter and give them a deadline nicely. Get permission to mass-produce it and then print out multiple copies with a note at the bottom stating you were given permission to mass-produce.

Winning scholarships takes effort, but with good leadership and creative organization, you can make the whole process easier on everyone involved. If you really want to earn that money, leave your excuses behind and make things happen. I wish I could tell you exactly what to apply for and how to write a winning essay.