Help with the high school to college transition.
Scholarships, the application process, and personal essays. Those are just a few of the main worries during this major transition and I'm here to address them all.
Scholarships-
There are four types of scholarships, merit-based, financial need, athletic, and background. In all honesty, you have to either be poor, really smart, or good at a sport to win most scholarships. If you fall into that category there are a plethora of scholarships available to you, you should have no problem finding some. The problem lies within everyone who falls in between those categories, it’ll be more difficult but if you apply to a lot of them in both your junior year and senior year there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get at least one.
Advice: You’re more likely to get eight $1000 scholarships than an $8,000 scholarship so I could suggest you apply to as many lesser scholarships than the bigger ones. Why? simply because of availability and chance. Everyone is going to want to apply to a $25,000 scholarship and they may have a better chance because of their race and/or grades. Those smaller scholarships ADD UP. So apply, apply, apply!
Suggestions:
Niche.com (my personal favorite)
Scholarships.com
A church or organization you’re apart of
Unigo.com
Scholly.com (you have to pay for the program so if you want to you can)
Fastwebscholarships.com
Application process-
Your guidance counselor needs to be your best friend. Make sure they know exactly who you are and your academic standing by the time senior year rolls around. Most of the time they're really annoying and mildly helpful, but you may need them to nominate you for a scholarship or write you a recommendation letter. Make sure you build a strong relationship with 2 or more teachers. They need to know your personality AND work ethic. If they know you personally and how hard you work the better recommendation letter they'll write. If you know your grades aren't that great and you're not good with test-taking these letters and your personal essay will save you. Colleges don’t want a robot that only knows how to do work and nothing else. They’re looking for an interesting, hardworking and determined person to attend their establishment. Make sure your grades are as high as they can be & make sure your SAT and ACT scores are the same.
Advice: I would strongly recommend researching some of your top picks for a college and reach out to them. Normally their recommended SAT or ACT scores and GPAs are on their website but if not use niche! Niche not only provides scholarships but they also rate schools and give you all the information you would need to know about that establishment including a letter grade and statistics.
Personal Essay-
Besides your grades, this is the one glimpse of your actual person the college or university of your choice will see. Make this essay count! Like I stated before they want an interesting and hardworking student, not a robot. It would not be in your best interest to write about only your academic achievements in the entire essay. I’ll drop my own diagram about college essays including do’s and don'ts. If you have any questions you may email me at lanaspeaksnyc@gmail.com or DM me on my Instagram @ lanaspeaks, I’d be more than happy to further elaborate.
Also, I edit personal essays and most ELA based essays. My feedback is very thorough & my rates are super affordable! I’m also a self-branded high school to college transition adviser so this is my area of expertise!
Remember to love yourself, trust the process & live happier
LanaSpeaks, signing off 💕
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