When it comes to finding college scholarships, one of the most searched phrases online is, “No essay scholarships.”
The reality is many companies use scholarships–particularly no essay scholarship giveaway programs–as a marketing tool to collect contact information for potential customers. In fact, student lenders and banks identify students who will potentially need to borrow money for college, based on the fact that a high school, undergrad, or graduate student is interested in a scholarship.
Have you ever wondered about these so-called “no essay scholarships?” The reality is many companies use scholarships–particularly no essay scholarship giveaway programs–as a marketing tool to collect contact information for potential customers. In fact, student lenders and banks identify students who will potentially need to borrow money for college, based on the fact that a high school, undergrad, or graduate student is interested in a scholarship. The theory is that an applicant looking for scholarship money will eventually need a student loan to cover whatever funding gap they’re trying to fill. So, the next time you (or your college student) come across a scholarship fund that only asks for contact information and doesn’t require an essay, think a little longer about what that company is really trying to do and whether it’s truly a scholarship or merely a scholarship sweepstakes.
One popular website that boasts a “no essay” college scholarship is Scholarship Points by Devisors. Instead of writing an essay, students are encouraged to take surveys and sign-up for more “easy” scholarships to earn points and enter drawings. There are no other eligibility requirements. ScholarshipPoints awards three $1,000 scholarships each month and one $10,000 college scholarship every three months by selecting students in random drawings. The more points a student has earned, the higher their chances of winning the award.
The burning question here is, do websites and no essay scholarship sites like ScholarshipPoints actually choose real students and send them scholarship money? The answer is YES. I know this because one of my sons received a $1,000 scholarship from ScholarshipPoints! He was contacted by the scholarship provider via email and had a deadline of three days to respond. Once he did, they sent him a few simple forms to fill out and within two weeks the scholarship money was deposited into his tuition account at his school.
When it comes to eligibility, as I mentioned just above, no essay scholarships are usually open to a wide range of students. For example, a no-essay scholarship might be open to students ages 13 and older in the US, or maybe it’s open to all high school students in the US. These eligibility criteria are very generous and intended to give all (or nearly all) students who want to apply an opportunity to do so.
Because no essay scholarships are usually open to so many different types of students, along with the fact that they often require very little effort on the part of the student (and run more like sweepstakes than real in-depth scholarships), means that they are difficult to win, and the process is unpredictable. Luckily, because these scholarships require so little time commitment to apply, not winning one of these types of scholarships doesn’t necessarily indicate that you’ve wasted your time applying since it likely didn’t take that much time in the first place!
There are tons of resources and places out there that you can use to find “harder” scholarships to apply for to pair with your efforts in applying to the easy ones. The first place I recommend you go is over to the Access Scholarship Search Engine or Blog, where you can find all types of scholarships based on criteria such as home state, area of study, ethnicity, and more.
After that, I recommend you also do some surfing of the web, as well as outreach to your guidance counselor or financial aid office to help you find local scholarships and even more nuanced opportunities.
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