Scholarships for High School Seniors
College scholarships for high school seniors are useful to students who are preparing to graduate and move on into their college education. Heading off to college can be daunting for a number of reasons, amongst them being the price tag of a given university. High school senior scholarships are a useful way to help defray these costs because they reduce the overall price tag and in all hopes make college more affordable. Many students end up taking out student loans which just push the financial burden back, perhaps making things easier in the short-term but loading a student up with future stresses and debts they could otherwise avoid.
There are scholarships to cover students in many different walks of life and some are easier than others to get access to. Students who are seriously considering a college education should start their search for high school senior scholarships as soon as they are able and hopefully have planned for the event of their graduation a year or two ahead of time. Not every student will be this prepared, however, but they should not lose hope. While it would have been easier to have planned scholarships applications out sometime in advance, there are so many different scholarships for high school seniors available that they should still be able to find a relevant program with relative ease.
High school senior scholarships come in many different forms and one of the more common types is the essay contest. Penguin USA offers one such scholarship for high school seniors in the form of their Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest. This program makes available $1,000 awards to five different winners every year. In order to be eligible for these high school senior scholarships, applicants will need to be either in 11th or 12th grade while also being between ages 16 and 18. All applicants must be United States citizens. Submitted essays must be on an assigned topic as selected by the Signet Classics high school senior scholarship committee. In 2011 the essay topics all revolve around “The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins. The deadline for this program is April 21, 2011.
Two different awards are made available by the scholarship for high school seniors offered through Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Teens group. One of the applicants to their Video Competition program will receive $500 and another second place winner will receive $250. All applicants are expected to be United States citizens and be between 13 to 19 years old. Submissions must be in video format and relate to a moment when students learned something about Alzheimer’s disease, learned about care giving for sufferers of the illness or when the student decided to become a community volunteer. All material must be submitted no later than December 1 of every year.
The Posse Foundation & the Posse scholarship for high school senior program judges students using non-traditional criteria so a students true leadership abilities are exhibited in how well they work together in a team setting and how motivated they are to succeed.
The Best Buy Scholarship for high school students will be awarding up to $1.5 million yearly for high school students and grades 9-12. The Best Buy @15 Scholarship will award up to 850 scholarships to high school seniors.
The unique Western Union scholarships awarded 80 high school senior scholarships in 2011 and has many other types of awards with various criteria geared for students starting college.
The Robert C Byrd Honors Scholarship Program will award up to 27,000 scholarships for students heading off to college. This government sponsored scholarship scheme may be the largest of its kind and with so many yearly awards students have more of a chance to win one as opposed to others which award one or two yearly. Run and don’t walk to apply to this one.
The Big 33 Scholarship Foundation awards at least 150 scholarships every year. Between $500 to $4,500 are the awards. This may seem like an athletic scholarship, but this is not the case – anyone can apply and the qualifying criteria is very liberal.
The Cargill Scholarship Program includes three different scholarships and theirs one for high school seniors. You must live nearby a Cargill business to apply. These are Community Scholarships which tend to be lenient on qualifying. Forty one time awards of $3,000 are given out yearly which makes this program very worth applying to.
Oil Can Henry’s scholarships are one of those companies only known about by people who live around them. Their (85) locations are scattered through Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. They will maintain your car for the general maintenance that cars need done and they are very fast and good at it too which insures your car continues to run efficiently. Oil Can Henry’s will award $1,000 high school senior scholarships for each of their (85) outlets.
The Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation provides awards every year through their scholarships for high school seniors. Each year fifty students nationally will be selected to receive a $20,000 coke scholarship to the school of their choice and another 200 students on a regional level will be awarded $10,000. In order to be eligible for this program, students will need to be current high school seniors and citizens of the United States. All applicants will be expected to be graduating in their application year and be carrying at least a 3.0 grade point average. Of course all students must be planning to attend college. The application period opens on August 1 and material should be turned in no later than October 31 of a given year. 2011 scholars have already been selected, however students interested in these high school senior scholarships should begin applying for the 2012 cycle as soon as it opens.
The above senior scholarships are only a selection of many such programs available, and interested students should be sure to check with multiple foundations to get a full list of such programs. It is always in the best interest of a student to start as early as possible so do not wait until the last-minute to begin applying.