I always advise my client-students and parents that the teen’s primary “job” is their education, and that school work always has to come before working on scholarships. After all, high achievement in high school will (usually) lead to greater success in the student’s future career, not to mention more success in college admissions and even more success with scholarships. That said, students who treat applying for scholarships like a part-time job typically find more success than students who treat scholarships like an after-thought.
My Class of 2024 student, Talon, calculated his “hourly wage” of scholarships at $343.00/hour! My son calculated his scholarship wage rate at approximately $293.00/hour! The “Scholarship Wage Rate” is calculated by adding up all of the scholarship dollars won, then dividing by the total amount of time a student spent finding and applying for scholarships. This calculation includes the time spent working on ALL scholarships, not just the ones a student wins. After all, those losses take time, too, and should be factored into the “Return on Investment” a student achieves. Very few “real” careers are this lucrative, and Talon and my son’s “Scholarship Wage Rates” are more than double the typical hourly rate of many doctors and surgeons.
One of the most common questions I get asked is, “How much time should my student spend working on scholarships?” The answer to that question depends on many factors, including the age of the student, their other responsibilities, and more. However, as a general guideline, I like high school seniors to spend either 30 minutes per day, or 3 hours per week working on scholarships. Obviously, more is better, as the more scholarships a student applies for, the more they are likely to win. Regardless of the time spent, though, the more a student treats scholarship applications like a job, making it a part of their regular routine and responsibilities, the more success a student is likely to have.
Just like a regular job, the “job” of working on scholarships usually requires a supervisor. That’s what I call a student’s “Scholarship Buddy,” and is a role that is typically filled by the student’s parent or guardian. Just like a supervisor at work tells the employee what they need to be working on, a “Scholarship Buddy” should provide guidance to the student on which scholarships to prioritize, and provide milestones and deadlines for the student to meet.
Another way in which applying for scholarships is like a job is that the more time spent on the job, the better the person gets, and the more efficient and productive they become. When you start a new job, you usually aren’t very good at it. It takes time to learn what you are doing. The same holds true for scholarships. One reason I encourage students to start applying for scholarships before their senior year is that it gives them time to learn the process and build better essays that can be repurposed for multiple scholarship entries later on. Students that wait until their senior year, or worse, late in their senior year, simply aren’t as good applicants as students who have spent months (or years) “on the job” applying for scholarships.
The Scholarship GPS Course is the perfect way to shorten a student’s learning curve when it comes to “the job” of applying for scholarships. The course provides lessons on how to find and prioritize scholarships, and best practices for applying. It took me years to learn all of the information I share in the Scholarship GPS Course, but you and your student can gain all of that information in just a matter of hours, broken up into bite-sized lessons that you can view (and review) at your own pace.
Please, students and parents in the Class of 2025, don’t end up like this parent who wrote on Facebook, “I wish I had pushed my HS senior to commit to applying for scholarships. Later in her senior year, she found all kinds of ways to avoid putting in the effort.” Start your scholarship journey today! Fall is the perfect time to get the “on-the-job training” of scholarship applications so that by the spring, you’re a “scholarship professional.”
And, Class of 2026, you can get started now, too. There are FULL TUITION and FULL RIDE scholarships open to high school juniors, not available to seniors, as well as many more scholarship opportunities. Get “on-the-job training” for your scholarship journey today, and increase the chances of your “Scholarship Wage Rate” being incredibly high for your senior year.
Finally, Classes of 2027 and 2028, it’s not too early for you to start your scholarship journey. One of my students recently won a $2500 scholarship during his freshman year of high school! By the time he’s a senior, he will have so much more experience and expertise with scholarships than his peers that his odds of winning will increase dramatically. Click here to sign up for Scholarship GPS today: https://www.scholarshipgps.com/scholarship-gps