Enriching Education: Scholarship Tips from Scholaroo

 Scholarship applications can be very stressful, however, a little support can make a lot of difference.  

Here are Scholaroo’s tips on how you can help your kid while they navigate through applications.

Five Ways Any Parent can Help with a Scholarship Application:

1.  Searching & Researching Applications
Parents can help leverage their children’s time by surfing scholarship database websites (check out https://scholaroo.com/scholarships/) or visiting school scholarship resource centers.

Many applications will require an essay, which often involves compiling background information. This is yet another way that parents can make a significant contribution. Stopping by the local public library to check out some books or researching the essay topic online is always helpful.

Scholarship search and research is an ongoing process and parental assistance provides students with more time to focus their energy on the critical job of crafting each new scholarship application.

2.  Strategize the Application
Scholarship applications aren’t thrown together haphazardly. Because the best ones are strategically crafted, parents can help their kids work out a winning game plan for each application—one that showcases compelling credentials, character strengths, and other important points.

Creating a definition of each scholarship’s ideal applicant will help their kids emphasize aspects of their records consistent with this definition.

3.  Create a Scholarship Calendar
Managing stacks of paperwork and keeping track of scholarship deadlines can test a student’s organizational skills - especially when they have two papers, three tests, and four scholarship applications all due the same week.

Creating a calendar that marks each scholarship’s stage and hanging it on a specific wall will make an amazing difference.

4.  Review the Writing
Parents who do a lot of writing as part of their jobs might make great scholarship application copyeditors and proofreaders. They can identify grammatical errors, provide ideas for reorganization and offer content suggestions, but they shouldn’t insert their own sensibilities in place of their child’s - a big “no-no” that scholarship judges are quite adept at detecting.

5. Offer Encouragement
One of the most important things that any parent can do is to be supportive, regardless of the outcome of any particular scholarship application. So help your child laugh off—with bowls of ice cream or otherwise—any scholarship rejection letters that arrive in the mail.  Remind your child that apparent failures are merely steppingstones to success and that the most powerful phrase in any scholarship seeker’s vocabulary is “What’s next?”

**BONUS: Tips for Motivating Your Kids to Seek Scholarships**

- Make sure your kids understand the impact of college costs on family finances.
- Explain that less student debt means more freedom after college to pursue their passions.
- Emphasize that you really think they would make great scholarship candidates.
- Communicate that you will support them in their scholarship search in any way you can.


To learn about available scholarships in Scholaroo, please visit: https://scholaroo.com/scholarships/