Scholarships: Don't forget to think local!

Scholarships: Don't forget
to "think local"

Student’s searching for scholarships all seem to home in pretty quickly on the search tools available online ( , Peterson’s, CollegeBoard, and Princeton Review to name a few). Using these tools, they easily identify the national awards for which they may qualify. The fact that so many students have ready access to so many scholarship programs is something we can all be thankful for.

If you’re "in the business" though, you have to wonder if this reliance on online search tools is leading some of our students astray. Many don’t seem to pay much attention to awards that are more regional or even local in nature. That’s a real shame—here’s why!

The big-name national scholarships (Gate’s Millennium, Coca-Cola, Michele Kwan, etc.) get lots of press. As a natural result, they get LOTS of applicants. Some of the most outstanding students I’ve ever known have spent hours on these applications and haven’t even reached Phase Two (Coca-Cola) of the application process. The Gate’s Millennium application is extremely comprehensive, and again, the best student’s I’ve ever worked with have gotten nowhere.

Am I knocking these programs, or the students who win? Absolutely not! My hat is off the individuals and organizations that make these awards possible and to the truly outstanding students who win them.

What I am suggesting is that local scholarships may be a more productive use of time for most students. For example, each year a gentleman in our community offer’s a $500 scholarship to a student-athlete from a small part of our community. Some years, after promoting this scholarship online and in morning an afternoon announcements, we’ve had to literally call a student out of class in the last days of the application period and insist that he/she complete the application!

Other more local and even regional scholarships sometimes get only a handful of applicants. So tell me, where do you want to focus most of your effort: On the big-name scholarships where you’ll compete with tens of thousands of students, or on the more local scholarships where you may encounter little or no competition?

It’s question that each student must answer for him/herself. Why not give it some thought?

One final thing to note is that some scholarships may seem national, but retain a local touch. One that comes to mind is the Papa John’s Scholars Program. This is organized nationally, but funded locally. What this means is that if a local Papa John’s sponsors the award, the funds will be awarded locally.

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