By the time teens enter their senior year of high school, they have burned into their memory the idea that a ‘good’ GPA and a ‘good’ ACT guarantee scholarships and college admission. Counselors, teachers, misguided parents, and students all assume that those two basic measures of success used in high school will carry over into college, and that universities, federal and state governments, and private institutions will be throwing money at the students who achieve those 30s on their ACT or a 3.8 or more GPA. The fact is, as many seniors find out on their own that is not enough. Neither are certificates, awards, and other accolades. College costs are well understood by many, but the bill oftentimes is too large to be grasped fully in terms of how much in loans a student may have to take out. And the way to pay for it is to ‘just hunt for scholarships.’ That’s all students hear: ‘just apply’ for scholarships, win, and like that a college education is virtually attained.
Many scholarships are not as ‘merit-based’ as counselors, teachers, and even college graduates will have you believe. A vast majority of them have a demographic requirement, require membership in a club or organization, or have family-income requirements. Those few scholarships which truly do not depend on those outside factors are applied to en-masse, diminishing students’ chances of winning them. For example, a common place to find and apply for scholarships is through the College Board, who has a program/website called ‘Big Future.’ Big Future has a monthly drawing for a $40,000 scholarship. While $40,000 is a substantial amount of money, the scholarship being more of a lottery attracts thousands of applicants, so the chances of winning are slim. As for merit-based scholarships on Big Future, a huge majority of them are open only to students of certain majors, ethnicities, income statuses, religions, etc.
Most colleges have “scholarship universe” websites. However, the same problems persist: the scholarships open to everyone are hard to win, and other scholarships, which are technically merit-based, are open to a narrow group of students. For example, the website shows that it has multiple thousand scholarships, but after filling out the extensive application for the website, students only match with a few dozen at most. When first viewing these remaining scholarships, the large dollar amount seems very attractive to students in need of college money, but once a student attempts to apply, they are hit with numerous internal requirements from the company or institution offering the scholarship, and the most common type of requirement is an essay.
After students go through the tedious process of finding the scholarships they meet the bare requirements for, students are then hit with an essay prompt. To be fair, these essays range from 300 to 600 word minimums, however, are students not busy with school or work? Furthermore, most private scholarships are worth $500- $2,000, which compared to the cost of college, is almost meaningless.
Luck is another factor to this equation. A student might find the perfect scholarship: it is worth thousands of dollars, is open to students of all demographics, but still has a GPA or ACT requirement keeping it merit-based so that only students who put in greater effort are able to apply and win, but filling out the application and writing the essay does not guarantee anything. This student spent years in high school getting their A’s, some of which scored over a 30 on the ACT, but has nothing to show for it because another student won all of the dozen or so scholarships that the student was able to apply for. Scholarships, and college in general, is more luck-based than it is merit-based. A student has a few options in life, very few of which they have control over. They can 1: be born into a rich family who can pay for college outright, 2: be one of the lucky few who win a private scholarship, 3: go into crippling debt, or 4: not go to college.
