What's a scholarship and how do I get one?

Scholarships, the best way to finance your studies
N.B: This article is taken from http:\\gre.learnhub.com

Lesson Summary:
What Is a Scholarship?
There’s a scholarship for YOU
What Do You Need to Do?
How Can You Go About Getting a Scholarship?
Some sample Scholarships

What IS a Scholarship?

A Scholarship is defined as a financial award for a student scholar for the purpose of furthering their education.

Education can be expensive. Very expensive. If you’re rich, you shouldn’t have a problem paying for college. If you want to work while studying, you should be ok. If you feel like borrowing money to pay for university, that’s fine. But there’s a better way.

Schools, institutes and companies want to give you money. Yes, that’s right. Scholarships attached to successful students can raise a school’s reputation, create productive representatives of institutes, and help nurture future ideal employees for top companies. That’s why scholarships exist, and they’re out there for you to take advantage, so don’t be shy – apply.

There’s a Scholarship for YOU

If you’re thinking, “I’m not special, why would anybody give me money?”, you’re wrong. There’s a scholarship out there just for you, you just have to find it. If you have good marks, if you volunteer, if you help out in your community, if you participate in extracurricular activities, even if you have a disability- you’re eligible for something. Take a look at these stats from Scholarship Canada. Of the 7,363 individual scholarships listed in the 2004 ScholarshipsCanada.com Entrance Awards directory there are:

• 17 that require some kind of agricultural involvement
• 262 that require athletic involvement;
• 631 that require some sort of extracurricular activity;
• 615 that require some sort of leadership role;
• 1115 that require school or community service;
• 80 that require the student to have a general disability;
  

So you see, anybody can get a scholarship.


What Do You Need to Do?

To get a good scholarship, you should start early and focus even while you’re in high school. Here are a few things that will look great on your application and can help you secure a good scholarship:

• Study, and study hard. The better your grades are, and the higher your academic standing is, the better chances you have of getting a scholarship.
  
  
• Get involved. Join a sports team, get a role in a school play, or become part of a choir. Anything that can show your skills- time management, communication, teamwork, creativity, etc. This will help you a lot when you apply, since showing off your skills is quite important.
  
  
• Be a leader. Create your own school club, or gather friends and organize a volunteer session in an animal shelter. There are countless ways to show initiative and prove you can be a leader of tomorrow, which will look great on your application.
  

Whatever you do, make sure you don’t spend your time sitting on your couch and watching TV. Make your time count by doing meaningful activities that can help you improve your skills and demonstrate the fact that you can make a difference in the world if you get a scholarship and a solid education.


How Can You Go About Getting a Scholarship?

All you have to do is… apply!

These are the steps you should take to find and apply for scholarships:

Do your research. Use this LearnHub community and other websites to look for scholarships that interest you.

Analyze yourself. Figure out whether you fit in with academic-based scholarships, leadership ones, or maybe agriculture ones. Write down your strengths and what makes you special and find out which scholarship fits you best.

Work on your applications. Start early and watch the deadlines. Be sure to fill in the entire applications. Scholarship applications can require you to fill out information forms, questions about yourself, essays, portfolios, and more. There’s a lot of work involved, but luckily there are also a lot of online resources to help you. You can find some great tips here.

Send your applications in and hope for the best. Good luck!

Some sample Scholarships You Should Start Thinking About

• National Merit Scholarship, a US academic merit scholarship.
  
• Canada Millennium Scholarship, a similar Canadian Scholarship.
  
• Commonwealth Scholarships, a scholarship program in Commonwealth countries including the UK, Canada, India and more.
  
• World Bank Scholarship Program, for graduate studies in subjects that can contribute to economic development.
  
• Gates and Rhodes scholarships. These are awarded to students going into top schools, like Oxford or Cambridge. Other schools have their own scholarship programs.