Starting your scholarship search in January of junior year
January 10, 2023 · 2 min read
Most students start too late. Here's what to do eighteen months before you'll need the money.
If you're a junior in January, you're at the ideal starting point for scholarships — early enough that nothing has closed yet, late enough that you have a transcript and activities worth writing about.
Spend this month on inventory rather than applications. Write down your GPA, your intended major if you have one, your state, your parents' employers, every club and sport you've done, and anything about your background that a scholarship might be built around. That list is what you'll match against for the next year.
Then find your school counselor and ask for the local scholarship list. Local awards have the best odds you'll ever see, and they're almost never indexed by the big search sites.
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