Pam Andrews is a College Admissions Coach and Scholarship Strategist.
I recently spoken with her about the procedure for finding and applying for private scholarships.
Pam is known for helping her son make an impression on $700,000 in scholarship money that pays for his undergraduate and graduate school. More importantly, she's helped her clients win over $1,000,000 in scholarships.
College Scholarships vs. Private Scholarships
I don’t often promote professionals who help students with private scholarships because I usually don’t accept their philosophies of pursuing private scholarships above all else.
This message just feeds into the mystique that winning private scholarships will solve a family’s paying for college woes.
The reality is that applying for private scholarships is just a piece of the affording university process.
The numbers clearly show that the amount of free money provided by colleges themselves by means of grants and merit scholarships is four times larger than the disposable money in private scholarships.
So, finding and applying for private scholarships should only be centered on AFTER students have maximized their pursuit of institutional money (merit and need based) having a solid college search, selection and application strategy.
This is exactly the philosophy Pam espouses to her private clients. She calls it her layering technique.
The lower layer would be to pursue money from colleges themselves by making use of strategically to colleges that can offer the most in merit and need based aid. The second layer is to pursue private scholarships. But “How is the next step it?”
How to try to get Scholarships
Here is the second reason I connect so much with Pam’s philosophies. How she guides her clients to win private scholarships is by using a combination of efficiency and accountability.
There’s no doubt that trying to get private scholarships is an arduous task that requires students to become persistent or as Pam tells them they need to be inside it for “the long run”.
There are lots of, some to look for scholarships (Pam shared an excellent list in her own presentation, see video above). So it’s not the information that is a barrier, it’s the way in which students approach the procedure.
The example of her own son applying to 147 scholarships and winning 6 is evidence enough that to some degree signing up to private scholarships is really a numbers game.
Students have to produce a toolkit of essays and experiences they are able to pull from to become efficient while applying.
Here are a few of Pam’s ideas to help students get through the process:
First, affect a university that has money to give and is likely to be generous in line with the student’s academic profile.
- Go to school guidance office REGULARLY to locate local scholarship applications.
- Check other local senior high school websites for local scholarships.
- Think of areas where students excel (i.e., Leadership. Volunteering, Civic minded, etc.) and write an over-all essay about that topic or topic(s). Then search and apply for scholarships associated with that topic. All you need to do is change the essay a little to answer the prompt.
- Make sure that you research the organization’s mission statement and tailor your essay around their mission.
- Look up past winners from the award and then try to figure why they separated itself. Model their example.
- Parents should provide Admin support. This is a family effort.
- Set up a “SCHOLARSHIP EMAIL” that everybody can check.
- Have a collection place and time for scholarship applications (i.e., Saturday mornings at the Dining table).
- Use GOOGLE DOCS so that all can access the documents.
To learn more about Pam’s approach to private scholarships and her philosophies, watch her talk within the video below.
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