Perseverance in Applying for Scholarships
From the desk of Celia Tucker, Academic Counselor:
The scholarship money for the Class of 2016 is arriving and we are so happy for them (and their parents).聽 Austin Bank, The Kyle Lake Foundation, KTBB, East Texas Communities Foundation, and The Fresh 15 Committee are only a few of the organizations that have blessed our students. The bulk of scholarship award money is awarded from within the college or university a student attends but the hard work that students put into applying for local scholarships definitely can pay off. It is tough for students to apply for scholarships鈥擳aking the time to search for and find scholarships for which they meet the criteria, then to complete the application, write the essay, provide a resume and all required documents, and then to receive the, 鈥淵ou were not chosen鈥� letter certainly makes it hard to persevere but looking at a denial letter as a little bump in the road and continuing to search can be rewarding.
Several years ago I had a young lady that I called 鈥淭he Scholarship Queen鈥�. The minute I sent out information about a scholarship she was in my office asking for a paper copy. I believe she applied for 30 or more scholarships and was awarded probably 8. What she realized is that the information she provided for one scholarship could very easily be tweaked and used for almost all of them. She did the work once and was able to benefit from being so thorough. After all was said and done she sat down and did the math. What she found is that she was awarded approximately $8,000 for 15 hours鈥� worth of work which is over $500.00 an hour. Hhhmmm鈥ere鈥檚 to searching for scholarships.