My First Scholarship Search Experience

When I first started looking for scholarships to go to college, I opened FastWeb, filled out the questionnaire and clicked search. I got over 3,000 results! For the next three hours I read through 300 scholarship descriptions, out of which only two looked promising enough that I considered applying for. I quickly reconsidered these as soon as I realized that I needed to have read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand in order to produce two compelling essays for a contest that was the requirement of the said “scholarships”. I simply could not commit to spending the next few days reading these great works only to bet on the odds that I would win the essay contest with my mediocre writing skills.  After this first search attempted, I thought to myself that there must be a better way. 

So, what if I told you that using scholarship search engines should be the last thing you do to find your scholarship match? It is not to further confuse you on where to start this search, but to rather comfort you with the knowledge that you don’t need to scroll through thousands of random results.

Scholarshipfix Method

My Scholarshipfix Method is quite simple. The search starts nearest to you geographically and then expands to other areas of your life. Consider the pyramid figure below. 

Why do I recommend starting with the high school and hometown? Why is it so important?

The answer is Probability!

As you expand your search to larger regions the more people are applying for the same scholarships and therefore you are in a larger competition pool. Always start with the scholarships in your neighborhood. The more local they are to you the better your chances of winning them.  

Up next, I'll teach you how to decode a scholarship application and see if you qualify to apply.