“There’s a scholarship out there for everyone”-or so my guidance counselor tells me. One for tall people, one for short people, one for twins, one for having a good smile, one for people with milk mustaches. It would appear that there really is a scholarship out there for everyone. I'm not bashing ProgressiveU or anything like that, but asking a serious question. Where’s mine? I don’t mean to sound selfish, or egotistical, but somewhere in the higher quest for well-roundedness this circle came up an inch too short, and fell through the manhole to no man’s land.
The truth is that my family is well off, we live in a well off town, with a more than well off high school. So I’m not a genius, I’ll never be valedictorian, I can only dream of being in our top 10 percent(seriously, we don’t rank anymore because it’s too competitive). The highest GPA in our school: 4.38. That’s not even possible for most schools! But when my friends complain that getting an A in Gym is bringing down their GPA, I know something is not exactly right. God forbid I take an elective that I enjoy, for risk of getting a B+(or in my head, averaging that dreaded 3.5 into my grade point average).
The problem with scholarships isn’t even that I don’t test well, it’s that I don’t test well enough. Where are the scholarships for those who of us who fall in the middle? For us who spent all of high school toiling over papers and projects, sacrificing social lives, to come up two cents too short in the end?
Quite honestly, this is probably the only scholarship Fastweb has found me, that I a) qualify for and b) can actually do. For anyone familiar with fastweb.com, a website that claims to match you with scholarships that fit your profile, probably know what I'm talking about. Now, I'm a high school senior, and I already know where I'm going next year, so why does fastweb keep giving me scholarships that say they're only for 10th graders, or only for college students? Why do I keep getting scholarship matches to write essays about "Black Pride," when I've made it very clear that I'm white?
I suppose with all systems there's bound to be some people that fall through the cracks, a few holes that haven't yet been filled in. If I’m ever rich enough, or founder of some big company, I think I’ll sponsor a scholarship. For those kids who fall in the middle. For those like me, who just can’t seem to get much of a break.
You might want to try something like OneDollarScholar.org
http://www.guaranteed-scholarships.com/ also lists scholarships by college that are said to be guaranteed. I've never used it before, so I'm not sure if it's accurate or not, but it might be worth looking into.
There are also quite a few other scholarship search engines out there. They often don't list as many as Fastweb, but they list many that Fastweb does not that you may qualify for.
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~Fallon~
“What is insanity, anyway? Is it when you scream and everyone else whispers, or is it when you fight for what's right, even when everyone else thinks your wrong?” Ethergoth
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Ha, Fastweb sent me the "Black Pride" scholarship, too... and they've sent me scholarships for engineering majors, for people who live out of the country, and for bilingual students, and I'm pretty sure I did not check any of those boxes when I signed up for the website. I understand exactly what you mean. Just keep looking for scholarships! Good luck on your search! (:
I kept getting scholarships that didn't fit me too!
When you say your family is "well-off", do you mean financially? Because that makes it seem that you won't have too much of a problem paying for school. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. School is difficult to pay for, no matter who you are. If that guidance counselor is right, and there is a scholarship for everything, she hasn't taken into consideration that that perfect scholarship for you is also perfect for a million other people. The competition was driving me nuts, so I only applied for in-school scholarships that dealt with local businesses. Alas, no luck there.
Anyway, keep trying. Perhaps there's an essay contest that you can ace?
Only 4.38? Our valedictorian had over 5.2. Not sure how it was possible... they did some crazy weighting system. I lost 3rd place in the class because I got two 92's in junior year.
Anyway, I highly suggest checking out some of the links we have... in the About Us section, I think. We have a whole bunch of other scholarship engines out there that work sooo much better than Fastweb.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
My high school's highest possible was 4.0 (you couldn't get more than 100% in classes) and you could say that it was "highly competitive" since so many people received 4.0's and so many people were in the "top ten" (actually, there were so many people tied for first and second and third that top ten was people with two point somethings)... but for my school, it just meant that it was easy to get that 4.0.
Valedictorian from a school with an easy or bad reputation weighs way less than a 3.0 from a school with high standards. (For people in Western WA, a 4.0 from Clover Park or Franklin Pierce means nothing when compared with a 2.5 from Charles Wright or Annie Wright.)
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What's the worst that could happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do? [Rudy Steiner from The Book Thief]
http://progressiveu.org/143541-how-to-survive-the-2008-elections
We couldn't get over 100 in a class either, we just had a weird system or weighting so that you could do worse in honors class, and still have the same GPA as someone who did great in the 'tech' classes. And AP/IB classes were given a higher rating still, so a 100 in an AP/IB class was equivalent to like a 5.3.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!