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The 12 Most Olympic-Inspired College Scholarship Tips
Olympic athletes are so very inspiring and scholarship searchers can learn a lot from them with these college scholarship tips!
If you are a college-bound student or the parent of one, you may have realized that paying for college is very much like an Olympic event: hard, challenging, and stressful!
Here are my 12 most inspired Olympic college scholarship tips to jump-start your race and to help you come up with cash for college:
1. Hurdle over obstacles
Jump right over any obstacles in your way by setting aside at least 15 minutes a day to search for and work on college scholarships. 15 minutes may not seem like much time, but if you start early, those minutes quickly turn into hours and tons of scholarships found and applied for. Learn more about how to do this here.
2. Dive right in
Even high school freshmen (as well as elementary and middle school students!) can apply for college scholarships. Don’t be afraid to dive in early and try to win money for college. Scholarships for younger students do not have as many applicants, so the chances are automatically better the earlier in a student’s career they apply and become familiar with the process. Do you need a list of scholarships? Email me at [email protected] and I would be happy to share a list with you.
3. Shoot straight and keep your eye on the target
The more scholarships applied for, the better the chances of winning, but only if students apply SMART. Keep applying for scholarships all through high school and college. Many students and parents assume that college scholarships are only for high school seniors, but that is definitely not the case. Make scholarship searching and applying a part of your life right up until college graduation. Graduating with little or no student loans: SCORE! Learn what it means to apply SMART right here.
Use these college scholarship tips for every scholarship a student applies for!
4. Train early, train well – TRAIN SMART
Encouraging students to volunteer and help in their communities when they are young will help them become better, more compassionate people and add value to their college scholarship applications. Scholarship judges love students with lots of community service hours and those with quality hours, those hours spent at the same organization showing commitment, will impress the judges even more.
5. Stay clean
This just might be the most important part of your Olympic scholarship training. More and more scholarship judges, as well as college admissions officers, are admitting to checking a student’s social media profile to make the final award or admissions decisions. Students have got to maintain a clean online presence and use social media to impress, rather than as a platform for their wild ways. What is tweeted, posted, and shared online stays online forever exactly how I explain here.
6. Wrestle negative thoughts away
Even the strongest competitors doubt themselves at times, but it is the ones who are the most mentally tough who win the most medals. Students need to believe in themselves and be proud of their accomplishments. This feeling of self-confidence will shine through in their essays and allow the judges to get to know them on a deeper level.
Parents, keep praising your students for all of their achievements and let them know how proud of them you are!
7. Slow and steady wins the race
Marathoners know that race pace is vital to their success. Going out too fast will ultimately backfire at mile 20 when they hit the dreaded “wall.” Students who spend all their free time applying for college scholarships will burn out after a few months, get discouraged, and quit before their college acceptance letters arrive in the mail. Keep a steady pace, allow for small breaks, and you will be able to see the finish line much sooner and much clearer.
Which one of these tips will you or your student use in your scholarship training?
8. Draw from prior training
No athlete qualifies for the Olympics without years and years of training. When writing scholarship essays, students can use experiences that meant the most to them and tie them into the reasons they need college scholarship money. Essays written in story form with personal details are the most engaging, so encourage students to think back and use these experiences to make their essays come to life for the judges.
9. Go for the gold
Writing scholarship essays is tedious and even painful for many students. When an essay is written that a student is extremely proud of (and after it has been proofread and approved by at least two sets of eyes), they can use this golden essay for multiple scholarship applications. Be aware of word-count guidelines and adjust, if necessary. Always make copies of each scholarship essay written and applications submitted as I share in this post. The three most popular scholarship essay questions can be found right here.
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10. Represent well
Olympic athletes are proud to represent the country of their birth. Students applying for scholarships are representing their high schools, communities, and families. Encourage students to be proud of where they came from and what they represent. Success is 90% attitude and 10% aptitude!
11. Trust your coaches
Everyone needs a mentor, and students are no exception. Helping my own son win over $100,000 in college scholarships is something that I will never forget. Students can ask for help from their parents, teachers, or other adults in their lives that they trust and depend upon. These coaches can help students find scholarships, proofread applications and essays, remind them of deadlines, and encourage them every step of the way. My How to Win College Scholarships ebooks for parents and their students will walk you through the entire scholarship process step-by-step.
[2024 UPDATE: I have now helped all three of my boys win scholarships, and my husband and I have not had to take out any parent loans!!!]
12. The triple flip
No matter how ungraceful or unlimber you are, you will do a triple-flip (ok, maybe just in your mind) when the scholarship award letters start coming to your student’s inbox or mailbox! I’ll never forget how exciting it became to check the mail when my boys won so many scholarships. I think I’m still a little sore, but I’m ok, really… <wink>
Scholarship searching, applying, and winning may seem like an Olympic event, but it can be done! I firmly believe in partnering with your students and making the process a team effort.
When they win gold, parents also win in the form of less tuition money to come up with and loans to repay.
You may also like to read: Teamwork Makes the College Scholarship Dream Work
I’m passing the torch to you as I share the methods my son and I used to help him win scholarships and graduate from college 100% debt-free.
What Olympic event do you think the scholarship process most closely resembles?
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Monica Matthews is the author of How to Win College Scholarships. She helped her own son win over $100,000 in college scholarships and now shares her expertise with other parents and their students. She truly has “been there, done that” in regard to helping parents and students navigate the scholarship process.
Her method of helping students in finding college scholarships, writing unique and compelling scholarship essays, creating amazing scholarship application packets, and more have taught desperate parents to help their own students win thousands of scholarship dollars. She teaches them how to apply S.M.A.R.T. with outstanding results.
Monica’s scholarship tips have been featured on many prominent websites, and she has been dubbed the “Go-To” expert on college scholarships.
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