135 Applications and One Response

    
           For about two months now I have been applying to scholarships, sweepstakes and essay contests. I have a story that I feel can help others and, at the same time, hope can help to provide me with scholarships for graduate school. I am happy to report that I have been contacted and am a finalist for the Great Lakes Borrower scholarship. Although this is very exciting, at the same time I am very aware that I am only a finalist and have not actually won anything yet. There are also a couple things about this scholarship and the process I had to go through to become a finalist that I find incredibly  ironic.        I first think that becoming a finalist for this scholarship is ironic because it is offered by one of the largest student loan lending companies in California. It is also the same lending service that I had to take out my student loans with. This borrowing service offers about 1,500 in scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate students. However, I have about 23,000 dollars in student loans from them. While they have been instrumental in helping me postpone loan repayment until I’m done with graduate school- May 2017, it is striking to me that while they are highly aware of student debt, they only offer 1,500 in scholarships. While the above may be true, a company such as this even having a scholarship program is a wonderful thing. If more companies or borrowing services provided scholarships, like that of Great Lakes, the same students with educational debt would be able to apply for scholarships. This would increase the amount of scholarships available to students and would give them an opportunity to apply to these scholarships while they were learning about or considering taking out student loans.  

In addition to the irony of applying for a scholarship provided by a top student loan service, it is also hard for me to understand why transcripts and other documents necessary for application completion can range from 10 to 50 dollars per scholarship. The scholarship that I am a finalist for is in two parts. First, an online application including an essay and resume. And, second, an entirely new application including a group of forms that require transcripts. Needless to say, the transcripts alone are 35 dollars. Because I try to work at least 49 hours a week by picking up extra shifts at work, if I was not taking the extra shifts, I don’t think that I would be able to afford all of the necessary documentation for the scholarships I applied to. More than simply showing me how many scholarships are out there, this process has shown me that even applying for scholarship in order to pay for graduate school costs me money in the long run.

145 scholarships and counting..