Almost everyone hopes to finance their college education with scholarships. They’ve been told there are millions of dollars waiting for students to claim. The more popular (and reputable) sites are www.fastweb.com, www.scholarships.com, and www.bigfuture.collegeboard.org. They are all about the same and act as a clearinghouse for private scholarship information. Please feel free to create an account at any of them. Please do not ever pay someone to find you scholarships. Scammers will go to these free websites and charge you for the information.
Here’s the reality:
There are around 1.7 million private scholarships in the USA, with a value of about $7.1 billion.
That sounds like a lot of money.
But here’s the catch. They don’t give it all away. They award only a small percentage of the total value because these are endowments. That means the principle doesn’t get touched. Foundations only give away a portion of the interest the endowment earns. This is how they have enough money to give a scholarship year after year. Private scholarships can be for ANYTHING and do not always require top grades. Are you a twin? Have A parent who survived cancer? Left handed? These are some of the predictable ones; others can get oddly specific! Some don’t even need an essay. For example, have you heard of the contest to make a prom outfit from Duck brand duct tape?
Back to the serious stuff. According to Research.com, only 25% of students receive scholarships or grants, and 97% receive $2500 or less. Only .2% (did you see that point in FRONT of the two?) received scholarships worth $25,000 or more.
I am going to focus on merit-based scholarships unrelated to athletics. Click here for the stats for athletic scholarships by division and sport. Only 1.3% of college athletes get ANY scholarship at all. But it can help you get admitted.
The vast majority of scholarships come from the colleges themselves. Need-based scholarships are the most common type, and you have no control over how each college determines “need.” That leaves merit scholarships. Highly competitive schools rarely offer merit-based aid. When they can fill their classes 25 times over, they don’t need to entice anyone to attend with extra money. These are the Ivy+/elite schools everyone knows by name.