Scholarships

As you are looking at colleges it is only natural that your thoughts will turn to the overwhelming costs associated with attending college. Right about now, many seniors are so relieved to finally be done with their college applications that it can be hard to get motivated to complete scholarship applications. Each year I work with students who complain all the way through their scholarship applications.  I understand that it  and he ended up getting it done and submitted within hours of the deadline.  I tell you this story to try to remind you that while I understand it can be hard to stay motivated to complete scholarship applications when only one or perhaps a handful of students will receive the scholarship award, but it will be worth it if you receive a scholarship.  

Sometimes students see the "smaller" scholarships as being useless to apply for rather than large scholarships, but I believe that any scholarship received is significant as it is money that you do not have to pay on your own. 

Perhaps one way to help you stay motivated is to remind yourself that if you spend 10 hours working on 4 or 6 scholarship applications and then end up getting a $500 scholarship it ultimately means you earned $50 per hour of working on your applications - seems like a worthwhile use of your time to me!

I also need to clarify that most money does end up coming directly from your colleges, but there are so many other places to look for scholarships and you should consider all of the options to try to help make your college experience even a little more affordable. For example, do your parent's employers offer scholarships for dependent children? What about your place of worship? If you volunteer for an organization, do they offer scholarships for their student volunteers? There are also countless scholarship search websites where you can complete personalized searches for other qualities and characteristics that would be ideal for you. If you want to see some of these sites, please check out the WKHS Counselors website at http://www.wkhscounselors.com/.  On the counselor website there are some scholarships that we have received information about featured on the scholarship section (under college), but the scholarship search page can be found by selecting college and then financial aid and then searching for scholarships.

Good luck working on your scholarship applications!