It's all well and good to apply for the best college available to you. Then, its even better for you to be accepted. But then they start sending you the financial aid packages- and you realize you will never be able to pay out of pocket for education.
You check out loans, jobs and scholarships. The big wake-up call is the interest rates on those loans. While they may stay stable while you're in school, as soon as you graduate they usually increase tremendously. The reality of the situation is, for even four years of college you can be paying back school loans for the next twenty.
The end result is supposed to be worth it though, so you keep adding up the numbers, hoping against hope that they magically grew an extra zero on the end of your bank balance. It comes down to scholarships.
The requirements for some of these awards are extensive. And why shouldn't they be? They're giving you money for little effort, so they have the right to be a little picky. But one has to keep in mind the time it takes to even plan out a scholarship essay. Multiply that by how many awards you've decided to apply for, and the amount of time necessary is pretty daunting. That doesn't even take into account the applications that require more than one essay. The phrase 'there's no such thing as free money' comes to mind, as you pay for it in stress. Due dates, requirements, endless forms- they all mix together until you're not sure what you included on this form and didn't on another. There are so many scholarship opportunities out there online and in schools and businesses, it can be very confusing trying to pick which ones to apply for. My personal system has stressed me out to no end, and I thought it was a good idea at first. I look on scholarship sites and in my high school guidance office, and then order them in terms of how eligible I am. Then I order them by the size of the award, and last by due date. Due dates are whats killing me- I feel like I put all of my energy into one application and then I turn it in only to find another one has a due date in two days. I've sold my soul to the financial aid office at my college, having committed to attending, and am working hard to find a way to pay. All I can say is that it had better be worth it in the end.
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