When you are getting ready for college, you may wonder how to get a full ride scholarship. These scholarships are only offered to about 0.1% of students in the United States, making them competitive and hard to get. For students who are able to get one of these scholarships, it is a lot easier to enjoy college without having to worry about paying for college or having large amounts of debt when you are done. Some of the steps you can take to learn how to get a full ride scholarship includes:
Have Academic Excellence
It isn’t enough to just have a high GPA. You have to make sure your courses are challenging. If you have a 4.0 GPA but you took just the easy classes in high school, you will not receive a full ride scholarship at all. The more AP and college level classes you can take, while maintaining a high GPA, the more likely you will get a full ride scholarship.
Develop Your Skills in Leadership
This is really important if you would like to go to a private school. The committees who award scholarships at private schools like to invest in future leaders and will give scholarships to those who will be successful in the future. Your past experience will help them figure out whether you will be a good leader in the future. Your extracurriculars will be important here.
Do Some Community Service
It is important to have some community service in your free time. The quality is important as well. Pick something that you like and then stick with it; going each week or more is ideal for this kind of thing. You can add this volunteer experience onto the resume to help with getting that full ride.
Have Relationships with Instructors and Mentors
These individuals can offer you professional and academic advice and they will write out some good recommendation letters that can put you over the top of your full ride scholarship. It works out well for you if you can build up some good relationships as you go in high school.
Private School Full Ride Scholarships
Private schools can choose to offer a full ride scholarship to some of the students to attend them. Each school will have to determine what the requirements are for offering these scholarships and only 20,000 out of 20 million students will receive one in a given year. Since private school education is more expensive than other options, these full ride scholarships are even more attractive than regular full rides.
Public School Full Ride Scholarships
Many public schools can offer full ride scholarships to their students as well. This is a good way to encourage students to stay in state or to come to a specific school, but they are still really rare as well. Most of these public schools focus more on individual scholarships. Full-ride scholarships are offered based on merit and financial need in some cases.
A full ride scholarship is a great way to get your college education paid for so you can focus on your schoolwork and getting a great job when you are all done with college. Getting prepared early and knowing what the scholarship committees are looking for are important steps to helping you get ahead.
