Why We Are Not A Scholarship Program

There is a plethora of programs, books, and websites devoted to identifying and applying for scholarships. Consequently, not only would our program be redundant to become yet another scholarship program, but we would be focusing a tremendous amount of resources for a very small return on investment. Our program is research-driven and research-responsive. As such, the research is clear—being offered admission to the ‘right’ colleges will yield a significantly greater return on your investment of time, than applying for large national scholarships.

In the table presented below, the Coca-Cola, Ron Brown, and Gates Scholarship programs, all award scholarships to less than 1% of applicants. The annual scholarship value of the Coca-Cola Scholarship is $5,000 and the annual value of the Ron Brown Scholarship is $10,000. In stark contrast, a lower income student who is offered admission to a selective college will be awarded a scholarship with an annual value of $80,000 or more. The 4-year scholarship value will be over 16 times the value of the Coca-Cola Scholarship and will eliminate any student loan debt.

Based on this and other such data, the core of our program is focused on intentionally guiding students across the 3 pillars of scholarship, leadership, and service so that students develop a body of work, which makes them competitive candidates for being offered admission to the ‘right’ colleges for students who qualify for the Pell Grant and guiding students in being offered full merit-based scholarships at the ‘right’ colleges for students who do not qualify for the Pell Grant.

In this regard, nearly 50% of our students are offered full scholarships each year, compared to a national rate of less than 1%.

Imed bouchrika, PhD, the Chief Data Scientist & Head of Content for Research.com, in “72 Scholarship Statistics: 2022 Data, Facts & Analysis,” provides important data that any parent or student must consider when pondering the question, “Why do I need to join a college planning program?”:

• Only one in eight college students is awarded a scholarship (Kantrowitz, 2019).
• Of the students who were awarded scholarships, 97% receive $2,500 or less (Kantrowitz, 2020).
• Only 0.2% of students receive scholarships worth $25,000 or more (Unigo, 2021).
• Full-ride scholarships are awarded to only about 0.1% of students (Wignall, 2021).
• Full-tuition scholarships are awarded to only 1.5% of students (ThinkImpact, 2021).
• A regular high school student may have the qualifications for as many as 50 to 100 scholarships (Dickler, 2021).
• 42% of scholarships cannot be found through a simple Google search (Scholly, 2020).

Our response to such data is to guide students through applying for local scholarships, which are among the less competitive, AFTER, being offered admission to the ‘right’ colleges. Through the approach, the remaining financial aid gap is usually small enough that even students who do not qualify for the full Pell Grant can successfully close the financial aid gap, resulting in a full scholarship.

Want to learn more about what why students need “strategies” to focus their time and college planning efforts, click here to read, “The Athletic Advantage.”