The Importance of Scholarships
From a young age I always wanted to go to college and earn a higher education. I knew that college was very expensive, but I wasn't worried about it then. My family never really had a plan for me to go to college, so I thought this meant I needed to have a savings account if I was going to make it to college.. I never had a good skill of saving money though, so I quickly realized I was going to be relying on scholarships.
The importance of scholarships and what they can do to help teens go to college is abundant. Scholarships are free money that companies, small businesses and anyone can give to willing candidates. Scholarships help many students pay for college without the use of student loans.
In high school I started to learn the importance of what scholarships were doing and how they were helping students. I never knew how I would be able to have enough time to sit down and fill out scholarships to help me pay for college, but I knew I would need to. My senior year I was in two different leadership positions: a mentor for a 5th grade student and was a tri-sport athlete. My schedule was full, and I did not know how I would be able to fill out all these scholarships.
I started my process of finding scholarships by talking to my school counselor to see what I might be able to apply for. She printed out what looked like a book-sized number of scholarships I could look at and see if I was eligible. I slowly went through the massive packet of paper marking those that I could apply for and crossing out those I couldn’t apply for. While going through, I soon realized I was only eligible to apply for a smaller number of these. My emotions quickly turned from excited to devastated.
After finding the ones I was able to apply for I had to do research on upcoming scholarships. As I researched, I noticed I had missed many scholarships that came out earlier in the school year. Despite this, I was still seeing more and more scholarships that I was able to apply for. Businesses were giving out scholarships to help students get the opportunity to go to college. They were giving me and many other students a chance to chase our dreams and my feelings of excitement came back as I realized just how many people wanted to help students just like myself chase a higher education.
Filling out scholarships was very time consuming, and like many others, I believed that I didn’t have enough time. In order to ensure I did; I began scheduling how I would use my time so I would not waste it and have extra time to work on scholarships. The scholarships have greatly helped me pay for my first year of college. Taking the time to apply for scholarships is something I advise all prospective students to do.
