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Applying for scholarships can be a daunting and even frustrating experience. But here are a few tips to make the scholarship application process a little easier.
Create a brag sheet. This serves as an informal and deconstructed resume that you can use to not only secure quality recommendations, but also find scholarships that match your experience and interests.
Utilize your personal demographics to tailor your search. There are hundreds if not thousands of scholarships available with equal amounts of students applying for them. Using personal demographics like citizenship, race, gender, and ability status can help you find niche opportunities that give you greater odds of winning. Geographical demographics are also really good ways to find smaller scholarships with low comparative numbers of applicants.
Go for the small fish. Schools stack scholarships up to the cost of attendance. This means that if you receive three small scholarships of 5,000 dollars you can apply the 15k sum to your student account. Smaller scholarships also receive less applications due to the fact that they aren't as attractive as their seven-figure counterparts.
Essays, Essays, Essays. After starting your scholarship journey, you'll come to find that you're being asked to write a lot of essays. But this doesn't have to be the case. After your initial two or three, you can tweak your essays and recycle them for new applications. Make sure that you edit them to be specific to the prompt and to address key attributes the institution may be looking for. That leads us to #5.
Do your research. On the institution, the history and purpose of the scholarship, and previous recipients. Are there trends? Is there anything about you that relates to those trends? If so, that is something that you could capitalize on.
Don't be afraid to be unconventional. There are scholarships for so many different types of things. Whether it be spiderman, Minecraft, art, or religion, there are many scholarships that ask you to express yourself and your creativity. Be broad in this aspect of your scholarship search.
Scholarship search engines: Going Merry, Fastweb
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