UNIGO - scholarship finder and resource!

Ladies, gentlemen, seniors, non-seniors - the year is ending and we need to get these scholarship entries in!

For those who don't know, a scholarship is a grant or payment made towards a student's education, aka their college education! They don't always apply to just college, but they're usually designed to help students like you and I pay for an undergraduate degree.

Usually, a scholarship entry requires you to write an essay or respond to a question. For example, a lot of them ask, "How do you intend to make a difference in today's society?" or something like that, and they'll give you a minimum word count to apply to your essay.

If you hate writing essays, some scholarship organizations ask you to go the extra mile and submit a video or something. But you have to be creative! They usually ask for a campaign on recycling or texting and driving or something like that. If you're going to make a video, it has to be informative, attention-grabbing, and organized. I personally don't do video entries because I know I will make a fool of myself, but you know, go for it! 😀

Organizations ask us to do all kinds of things for a scholarship because they can only choose a select few recipients, and they want to see if we're deserving of it. That's why they like to ask about societal issues that we're passionate about and "making an impact". You have to dive deep and sell yourself as the best candidate for the scholarship. Organizations don't wanna give their money away to just anyone!

When it comes to the prizes, they may vary from organization to organization. Sometimes it's $1,000 and sometimes it's $10K. Sometimes there can only be one winner, and sometimes there's a first, second, and third place. It all depends on their scholarship rules, which are important to read up on every time! Do not assume!

Remember that every scholarship has a deadline! There's always a due date you must be mindful of, especially if an organization is asking you to make a 20-minute infomercial and write 5 essays (I'm sure they wouldn't ask that much of you, but you never know).

This means you need to give yourself enough time to complete scholarship entries. I like to look for scholarships at the beginning of each month (and throughout the month of course) so that I can look at the due dates ahead of time. And sometimes organizations ask you to involve other people, like get a recommendation letter or something, which may take a little extra time!

Always be aware of the requirements! You have to read up on each scholarship you are considering applying for and make sure that you're eligible for it, and that it's something doable for you that you have time for. Each scholarship has requirements, some of them are specific to a certain age group or to a particular student, like "aspiring business majors" or something like that. Doable just means you know that you can realistically get it done in the time that you have. If you can whip up an 1,000-word essay in 2-3 hours, then go for it.

An online platform I like to use to look for scholarships is UNIGO. Unigo is a platform I use to find scholarships and match me to the ones I am eligible for. It makes the scholarship search process a little easier. For one, Unigo actually sends me alerts of new scholarships every month via email. All I had to do was create an account with them through Google and build a profile so they know what type of scholarships I am eligible for.

On top of that, the Unigo organization is actually a scholarship program itself, and it offers the easiest, most doable scholarships. For the most part, Unigo scholarships are available for anyone ages 13 and up and a lot of them require short responses instead of essays. So if you hate essays, this is the scholarship platform for you!

By short response, I mean it asks an open-ended question, but you can only answer in 250 words or less, at least by Unigo requirements. The best part about it is that their response prompts aren't all about education. In fact, they almost never are! "Which superhero or villain would you want to change places with for a day and why?" "What is a gift you have received and how has it made an impact on you?" Unigo offers super easy prompts and opens the door of opportunity to a wide range of students.

As students, it's important that we take advantage of the resources and opportunities that are given to us. I would've never found the Unigo platform had I not done a little more research. We have all the resources, we just need to learn how to use them for our benefit and create opportunities for ourselves. Whether you're in the Class of 2021 or not, I wish you good luck in your college planning process and hope that financial aid isn't an issue once you get those scholarship entries in!