The 3 biggest mistakes to avoid when applying for scholarships
If you or your child are hoping to attend college soon, cost is likely a top priority. As many young adults fall increasingly into debt, top schools continue to raise tuition fees. In the second quarter of this year, outstanding U.S. student loan debt exceeded $1.8 trillion. According to the Education Data Initiative.
To keep costs low, potential students can ideally win several scholarships. But this may be easier said than done.
But Carlynn Greene did it, and she suspects you can too.
Greene won 30 scholarships to attend both undergraduate and graduate school at the University of North Texas and graduated with no debt and no degrees in broadcast journalism and public relations, advertising and applied communications.
He put these skills to use by working full-time as a content creator and founder. Scholarship GuruIn this way, he has helped his clients receive scholarship awards worth millions of dollars.
“There are a lot of mistakes people make when it comes to scholarships,” Greene says. One of the biggest problems, he says, is that you fail to put your best foot forward in your paper.
“I always tell my students that you want to try to approach marketing as if you were marketing yourself, because many of the principles we learn from marketing can also be applied to scholarships,” he says. “Because you’re trying to convince someone why they should invest in your education instead of someone else who’s competing with you.”
Here’s what Greene sees as the most common mistakes applicants make when applying for scholarships and how you can avoid them.
1. Focus on national scholarships
Greene says it will be difficult for anyone to stand out in the midst of an enormous pool of applicants, no matter how strong their essays are.
“Nine times out of 10, when people are just starting out, they apply to ones that have very broad eligibility requirements,” he says.
And while these national scholarships come with five- or six-figure awards, “you’re much more likely to win local, state, and what I like to call intersectionality scholarships.”
By this he means awards that include multiple criteria that can identify you, such as race, gender, geographic location and field of work. “This will narrow the pool of competition,” he says.
2. Not treating yourself like a hot commodity.
Greene recommends filling your application materials with concepts from the world of marketing: scarcity and urgency. Essentially, how unique are you or your academic goals and why should you get funding now?
For example, a medical student might want to emphasize that he or she plans to specialize in treating a rare and deadly disease, Greene says.
“If you find relevant data, like a news article or research paper that points and highlights that, that will send the message to the audience, to the judges, that it makes more sense to invest in your education than, say, someone going into plastic surgery,” he says.
3. Applying for only a handful of scholarships
It can be easy to get discouraged if you don’t win the scholarships you were hoping for, but Greene says it can be a numbers game even for excellent candidates.
“I won 30 scholarships, but I applied for just over 100,” he says. “I had another student who won 20 scholarships. A little over 200 applied. So it depends.”
In addition to the website, Greene also recommends using online tools such as: bold.org And be happy To find scholarships that meet your criteria and that you can apply for collectively.
Greene generally recommends applying for between 100 and 200 scholarships for the average student.
“This may seem overwhelming, but when you compare it to even applications in the job market now, many people are applying for hundreds of jobs,” he says.
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