scholarships

Should You Keep Your Religion To Yourself?

July 8, 2010

Of the 200+ scholarship help articles I’ve written in the last year or so, the one that’s gotten me the second-largest amount of hate mail is the one about thrusting your politics and religion upon scholarship judges. (It’s a distant second, mind you — the top spot is still held solidly by the admittedly inflammatory [...]

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Nontraditional Students: Discriminated Against For Scholarships?

July 1, 2010

The most common question I get around here is also the toughest to answer. It’s some variation of this: “I seem to be doing everything right, but I’m not winning any scholarships. Why?” It’s hard to answer because, without access to each person’s scholarship application materials, it’s hard to say what kind of mistakes he/she [...]

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Three Kids, No Money, a GED & Plenty of Heart (Tony’s Story)

April 15, 2010

I got a great note yesterday from a guy named Tony who’s in a tough spot, so I thought I’d use his letter as the basis for today’s post. Tony may just be the poster child for this time and place in our history, and I hope he’s in the beginning stages of what turns [...]

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TGIF Edition: Elizabeth & Nancy Wrap-Up

April 9, 2010

Evening, fellas (that’s a gender-neutral term on this blog). I’m going to keep it short and sweet today, since a) I’m home alone this weekend minus kids or wife and am going to try to spend it some other way than glued to this computer like I do every other day, and b) it’s Friday, [...]

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Money vs. Happiness: Should Elizabeth Take What’s Behind Door #3?

April 6, 2010

Ridiculous as it may seem, many states put more emphasis on teaching teachers to teach, rather than teaching them anything worth teaching.

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Scholarships for White Kids, Black Kids & Parents of All Colors (Monday Mailbag!)

April 5, 2010

Your experience is a twist on that theme, though — it doesn’t sound as if you’ve been repeatedly trampled by fate every time you’ve done something; you just come up a tiny bit short. Trust me when I say that millions of people know exactly how you feel.

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Why Don’t I Ever Win? (or) Why Doesn’t My Kid Ever Win?

April 2, 2010

Happy Easter from the wind-swept plains of Western South Dakota! Where the usual surprise (not really) April blizzard hit us overnight, and is providing good cover for the Easter Bunny as he creeps nigh. Wow, we got a ton of great responses on my hate mail post yesterday, and one of the best was from [...]

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Scholarships: Community Service Optional? (Counselor Buddy!)

March 31, 2010

I have a friend who’s a high school counselor and, despite how often I complain to her about poorly prepared high school students, still talks to me and seems to like me at least a small amount. Let’s call her “Counselor Buddy” from here on out. Counselor Buddy does a great job advising her students [...]

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Scholarships vs. Marketing & Scams: The Wisdom of Jen

March 30, 2010

Happy Tuesday, estudiantes! I told you yesterday that I was holding back a really good comment from a gal named Jen who added her thoughts to my initial $10,000 Scholarships post. She has some good advice that’ll help you cut through the mountain of scholarship-related bullshit on the Internet, and I’ve chimed in throughout to [...]

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Scholarships vs. Loans? Rachel’s Dilemma

March 25, 2010

Scholarships vs. Student Loans: “Judge Josh” Barsch answers the question once and for all.

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$10,000 Scholarship Drawings: Legit?

March 23, 2010

I’m still catching up with some of the comments left during the last few months of my pathetic absence from this site, and today I’m going to address one that’s come up multiple times. You may have seen references all over the Web to “scholarships” that seem to require very little of their applicants. Some [...]

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The $150,000 Scholarships That Aren’t on Fastweb

July 29, 2009

First of all: Bookmark this page! You’ll want to re-read it many times in the near future. And since you opened it, I’m going to assume that you’re at least a tiny bit interested in a scholarship that would pay you $150,000. After all, it’s not like you haven’t thought about this topic before. If [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #10: Act Like You’ll Starve If You Don’t Win

July 27, 2009

Judges know that you would very much like to receive the scholarships that you apply for. It’s natural for you to have some emotional stock in whether you win or not. College costs are serious business, and every dime you can get someone else to pick up for you, the better. But in hundreds of [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #9: Bore Me With Irrelevant Crap

July 26, 2009

I know, I know – that’s an abrasive way of putting it for those of you who are easily wounded. In other words, then, do yourself a favor: exclude any unnecessary information that has nothing to do with your scholarship essay. Everything in your essay should be relevant to the topic at hand. We receive [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #8: Preach To Me

July 25, 2009

Scholarship essays are certainly about self-expression, and lots of applications ask open-ended questions about how you, the forward-thinking leader of tomorrow, might solve today’s problems. That gives you full license to come out with your ideas on how to change things, and in so doing, you’ll probably find yourself pointing out the flaws of society [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #7: Give No Details

July 24, 2009

Over the past two days, I’ve written about how school activities alone aren’t enough to win you scholarships, and that worried some of you quite a bit. Fear not, friends: today we’re continuing yesterday’s discussion of how to beef up those scholarship applications and cash in on the mistakes of your classmates. Here’s a huge [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #6: Forget About Family

July 23, 2009

Yesterday I wrote about how school activities alone weren’t enough to win you scholarships, and that sent some of you into a panic. Seems many readers have been banking quite heavily on those school activities to win you some money. Not to worry: Today and tomorrow, we’re addressing how to beef up those applications and [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #5: Ignore the World Outside High School

July 22, 2009

The average scholarship applicant lists a truckload of school-sanctioned activities in which he/she has participated over the four years of high school. Sports teams, clubs, projects, competitions, etc. This can only be a good thing, right? After all, that’s what your parents and counselors have been telling you all along — the more stuff you [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #4: Give Us Some Vague, Self-Absorbed Plans for Your Future

July 21, 2009

A rule of thumb in scholarship essays (and life, if you will) is that it’s better to be specific than to be vague. Society is accustomed to using vague labels for people and what they do: student, businessman, housewife, factory worker, etc. These labels are convenient for the normal “small-talk” conversations that fill our daily [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #3: Cry Me a River

July 21, 2009

Hardships: We all have them, right? If you read as many scholarship applications as I do, you’d certainly think so. With college costs spiraling upward every year and families pinched for cash to pay for it all, students are going all-out to make sure the committees understand how rough they have it. But the truth [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #2: Bore Me With Your GPA

July 21, 2009

Nothing angers the high-ranking students (and their teachers) more than this one, but I’ve some bad news for you, and you’re not going to like it. Are you sitting down? OK, here goes: Your GPA doesn’t really matter that much, {!firstname_fix}. If at all. It’s ok, I’ll give you a minute to let it sink [...]

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Scholarship Screwup #1: Thrust Your Religion and Politics Upon Me

July 17, 2009

More practically, consider this very basic truth: the more contentious the issue you choose to write about, the more likely it is that one or more committee members will completely disagree with you. Divisive issues divide, and in all likelihood, you’ve got no idea who’s even judging your scholarship application, let alone the personal and political beliefs of those people.

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What Jim Carrey taught me about scholarship advice

June 19, 2009

Happy Friday, everyone. One of my all-time favorite movies is “Dumb and Dumber.” When I got my first job out of college and was so broke that my bed was actually my couch, I used to pop in the VHS tape (remember those?) on my tiny living room TV and listen to it as I [...]

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NY Times: Basically, you’ll never save enough to pay for college

March 25, 2009

It’s not a long article — more of a USA Today-style nugget — but it confirms what most of us already know, which is that college tuition rates are rising much faster than our rate of savings (or the interest anyone plans to earn on those savings in the very near future). Long story short: [...]

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5 Ways to Win More Scholarship Money

March 18, 2009

If you’re a student who’s already in college or about to start, you have my deepest condolences. The economy you’re inheriting hasn’t only devastated the job market you’ll soon be trying to claw your way into, but also the financial resources of the universities to which you’re applying. That’s right – those fat financial-aid packages [...]

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You must Beat the Stack.

March 26, 2008

Once you read this section, it’ll seem very obvious, but most people completely overlook the advantage you can give yourself by paying great attention to the way you physically package your essay. Remember Rule #1: Competitors are everywhere, and you must put your best foot forward. Your essay’s packaging is one way to do this [...]

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The Most Basic and Fundamental Rule

March 26, 2008

Please, please, please: Just follow the instructions. Many of the tips you’ll read about in this book are very specific, but this one I’d consider more as a very general “rule to live by” – at least as far as scholarship applications go. It’s a cliché that rules are made to be broken, but don’t [...]

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Three rules worth repeating. Over and over and over again.

March 26, 2008

There are several very important themes in this book, and you’re going to hear me repeat these themes over and over again. And again. You’ll probably get tired of them, but the reason I repeat them so often is because they are constantly overlooked by scholarship applicants every day, and because of that, these applicants [...]

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Rule #1: Competitors are everywhere, so put your Best Foot Forward at all times.

March 26, 2008

You’ve probably heard me talk about this website before, but it bears repeating: Thanks to the Web, you now have access to thousands of scholarships you never would’ve known about prior to the Internet age. That’s the good news. The bad news is this: So does everyone else. The competition for scholarship money is more [...]

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Why are Scholarships so much harder to get now?

March 26, 2008

Whether you’re a student or a parent, you’ve probably been assuming all along that getting a scholarship today is not much different from getting a scholarship 5, 10, or even 20 years ago. You compete against your classmates, and may the best man/woman win, right? Wrong. The process of giving and receiving scholarships has changed [...]

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