Welcome back to our merit scholarships blog post series! In Part 1, we explored some myths and realities regarding merit scholarships, and in Part 2 we explored list-building strategies. As a reminder, your college list plays a crucial role in determining how much merit aid you’ll receive. Some schools offer generous scholarships to attract students, while others, especially highly selective institutions, offer little to no merit aid at all.

After you have built a strategic college list, you may want to supplement with third party or outside scholarships. There are a variety of outside scholarships available; a few very competitive large awards exist, but the majority are for smaller amounts ($2000 or less) and are non-renewable. While these scholarships should not be your primary strategy to pay for college, they can be a nice bonus of additional money.

However, outside scholarships take a lot of time and effort to apply to. Seniors who are already spending a huge amount of hours on schoolwork, extracurriculars, jobs, and college applications often don’t have time, energy, or motivation to complete additional applications. They may submit 50–100 applications and receive just one award, so families should weigh the balance of time spent vs. possible payoff. Follow our tips to develop a smart strategy for additional scholarship applications.

Be Strategic

• Focus on local scholarships. Check with your school counseling office and local resources such as:
• City or county foundation that awards scholarships
• Scholarships for students from your high school
• Local clubs - Rotary, Kiwanis, etc
• Parents’ workplace
• Church
• Community groups that you or family members belong to
• Focus on scholarships with specific qualifications that you meet
• Student-athlete
• Specific major
• Art, music, dance involvement
• Specific interests or hobbies
• “No essay” scholarships may be easy to apply for, but that means they get a lot of applications (a.k.a. They are more difficult to get). Online “no essay” scholarships are often marketing tools to get you onto a mailing list.

Know Your Colleges’ Policies

• Scholarship Stacking

• “Stacking” allows students to use additional scholarships on top of the aid awarded by the college

• Scholarship Displacement

• “Displacement” means that outside scholarships earned will replace money awarded by the college (a net gain of 0 for the student)
• For example:
• A student is accepted to a college with a $40,000 sticker price.
• They are awarded $30,000 in financial aid by the college (left with an out-of-pocket cost of $10,000)
• They earn $4,000 in third party / outside scholarships.
• Instead of applying the scholarships to the balance and reducing the student’s out-of-pocket cost to $6,000, the college reduces their financial aid award to $26,000 and adds the outside scholarship award to it to equal $30,000
• The student is still left with a $10,000 out of pocket cost
  
  

• Questions to ask on college visits:

• How do outside scholarships affect the institutional financial aid package?
• Do you allow stacking?
• Are there restrictions on combining outside scholarships with merit or need-based aid? Is there a limit to how much outside scholarship money can be applied before institutional aid is adjusted?
• If you practice displacement, will outside scholarships reduce merit scholarships, grants, loans, or work-study first?
• If the scholarship amount exceeds direct costs (tuition, room & board, etc), can it be used for indirect costs such as books, supplies, or travel?
• Will outside scholarships impact financial aid eligibility in future years?

Now that we have covered the ins and outs of merit scholarships throughout our series - myths and realities, strategic list building, and outside scholarships - you are in a great position to maximize your opportunities and make college more affordable. Do your research, be strategic, and good luck on your college journey!