College is expensive. Really, really expensive. We’ve written before about when and where and how to find scholarships, but today we’re going to bring you inside our process, and show you the exact steps we’ve taken to help our students find, apply for, and earn full scholarships to top colleges.
There is scholarship funding out there, quite a bit of it; the trick is finding it, and knowing how to apply. We’ll lead you through the stories of a number of our students, and how we helped each of them find scholarships that met their collegiate needs. Let’s get started!
Need Based Scholarships
The first student we’ll look at is Henry, one of our Laurel Scholars students. Henry was a smart and talented student, but was entirely unable to afford college tuition. We helped him find and apply to schools with generous need-based aid. Here’s how that worked:
Step One: Building a List
Some schools offer generous need based aid, while other colleges want to, but lack the financial resources. With Henry, we only applied to colleges that promised to meet full demonstrated need, and focused our efforts on need-blind schools. These schools examine applications with no concern as to whether or not you can pay, and seek to admit the most qualified students regardless of their financial circumstances.
Henry’s list focused heavily on these schools, and also had a secret weapon: Questbridge.
We’ve written about Questbridge before, but to sum up, it is a program which allows students with demonstrated need to apply to top colleges, and if they are admitted, they are guaranteed a full scholarship, including all expenses. The choice of schools you can apply to is limited, and the application more extensive than the Common App, but if you qualify, you should make use of this resource.
In addition, there is no limit to the number of schools you can apply to through Questbridge in the regular decision round, and many of them require fewer supplemental essays than they do through the Common App. This allowed Henry to fill out his list with a number of target schools without needing to compose additional supplemental essays.
Step Two: Independent Scholarships
While Henry was well positioned to earn need based scholarships from the schools on his list, he also applied for the Gates Scholarship. Here, the same traits that made him a competitive applicant for top schools propelled him to the final round of evaluating scholarship applicants.
The Gates Scholarship, and other top independent scholarships, are looking for students with truly incredible academic performances, who have taken the time to give back to their communities, and show true passion for academic subjects. Henry fulfilled this in spades. He was the top performing student at his high school, worked as a tutor, and began a popular online group to prepare for math competitions.
Step Three: Evaluating Offers
Henry received full ride scholarships to a number of top schools; Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, and more. The aid offers were all equally generous, which afforded him the chance to pick the school which best fit his goals and personality.
Why This Worked
So what about Henry’s application made him so attractive to these colleges, and what caused them to award him with scholarships?
- Financial need. Top colleges, including the entire Ivy League, don’t offer merit scholarships. That said, anyone earning under $150,000 per year will qualify for need based aid at most of these schools.
- Academic excellence. As financial need is the only barrier to get the scholarships, the other measure Henry had to meet was getting into these schools. His excellent academic record and extracurriculars, coupled with our help polishing his essays, proved remarkably effective here.
Merit Scholarships
Merit scholarships are another case; not all schools have generous need based aid, and not all students who hope to attend college qualify, though they may actually want funding assistance with college, the schools they apply to may not cooperate. We work with students like this all the time at Ivy Scholars; let’s look at how John managed to get multiple major scholarship offers.
Step One: Building a College List
John was a great student, with high grades and top test scores, but he wasn’t interested in applying to Ivy League schools. He wanted two things out of college: a great business program, and a school that would offer him some form of financial aid. With this in mind, we worked to create a list of schools.
His list had two components. The first was a group of reach schools; top business programs at competitive schools. These schools often did not have much in the way of generous aid packages, but were prestigious enough that John would consider attending them even without an aid offer.
The second component was a group of slightly less prestigious, though still quite good, business programs. These were from large state schools, flagship institutions looking to attract top academic talent who more often turned them down to attend the Ivy League. They are willing to offer merit scholarships to woo these students, and draw them to attend their institution instead.
Step Two: Honors Colleges
As part of helping John apply, we worked on his applications to honors colleges. These offer far better merit aid than schools at large; indeed for many public schools the best scholarships are directly tied to honors colleges. While the applications to the schools themselves are often easy, without burdensome supplemental essays, the honors colleges are more likely to ask for the kinds of essays and experiences normally expected by Ivy League schools.
Even outside of honors colleges, some merit scholarships require their own supplemental essays, above and beyond what is required simply to apply to the school itself. These scholarship funds are seen as an investment by the school in question, and they want to do their due diligence on you, to make sure they’re choosing their investments wisely.
Step Three: Understanding Awards
John was admitted to a number of schools, which allows us to explore an important point: what aid awards look like from colleges. Some schools admitted him, but offered no financial aid at all, such as UC Berkeley. As an out of state student, he would be on the hook for the full tuition (plus room and board) if he chose to attend.
An honors college at a less prestigious state school offered John a full ride scholarship, plus housing in the honors dorm as part of its aid package. Other colleges offered merit scholarships as well, in levels of generosity.
Be aware when reading merit aid offers that they are generally directly tied to your academic performance at college. Some are also only offered to freshmen, as a hook to entice you to attend. There are further scholarships offered to upperclassmen, but these are not automatic. We helped John avoid a few offers like this.
In the end, John examined his offers, and went to an honors college at a flagship state school, one which offered him $15,000 a year in scholarship money. This was not the largest aid offer he got, but their program directly fit his future interests the best.
Final Thoughts
Between them, Henry and John received well north of a million dollars in scholarship offers, despite being very different students, with different circumstances, needs and wants. Regardless of your circumstances, scholarships for college can be found, though which ones you qualify for, and should pursue, will differ based on you and your own personal circumstances.
We hope this article has given you insight into how finding and applying for scholarships works, and what it looks like when you do. If you want to hear how we can help you, with this or any other aspect of college applications, schedule a free consultation today. We have a deep experience meeting students where they are and giving them the right help for their situation, and we’re always happy to hear from you.
