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Published October 12, 2019 | Last Updated November 7th, 2023 at 04:49 pm
Sometimes the best way to learn is to go through the process yourself and then share your learnings with others.
That’s exactly what Dawn Wotton did in our Paying For College 101 Facebook group.
Her suggestions on how to apply for scholarships were so good, we’re sharing them here for all to read.
Here are Dawn’s tips to consider when applying for private scholarships…
Ask the people writing the reference letters if they will allow you to have a couple of copies made and to be able to use them more than once.
Why?
A lot of scholarships ask for recommendation letters.
How many different people do you want to have to ask?!
You’ll not only be using them to apply to the schools…you’ll need them for local and outside scholarships too!
Think about who your student should ask to write their recommendation letter(s).
Scholarships will often dictate or recommend the type of person they want to see a recommendation from.
The scholarships my daughter applied to asked the following people to write recommendation letters:
Everything was covered: Academics, Athletics, Leadership, Community, and Responsibility.
Essays! Some scholarships want 250 words. Others want 500….my daughter had a couple that were “up to 2500 characters.” Pay special attention to those requirements.
Write a couple of good essays.
The recurring theme we saw was leadership and community service. Once my daughter had a couple of good essays, she tweaked them to fit the word/character requirements and scholarship specifics. She probably wrote two dozen essays but they were from the same three essays!
We had searched for different local scholarships late summer/early fall. Most didn’t open the application until Jan or Feb. By the time the applications were open, we were prepared. We knew who she had to get recommendation letters from, who was asking for tax forms, etc.
[Monthly lists of scholarships]
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Use R2C Insights to help find merit aid and schools that fit the criteria most important to your student. You’ll not only save precious time, but your student will avoid the heartache of applying to schools they aren’t likely to get into or can’t afford to attend.
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