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It’s the time of the year when seniors consider life after high school and all it entails. For many, that means sweating out college acceptances or rejections and planning how to pay for the transition to higher education. According to Mary Andrade, the college and career center specialist at Hollister High School, this can be a serious obstacle.
“For a four-year university in the California system,” she said, “with room and board, it could be between $30,000 and $40,000 yearly. A private university like Stanford could be over $65,000 a year. And you have to multiply that times four or five years.”
Luckily, there are over 110 scholarships available just to San Benito County students, along with a wide range of national scholarships.
Last year, over 2,200 applications were sent in, and 139 Hollister High School students were awarded 337 scholarships amounting to more than $369,000.
The catch? Researching and applying for scholarships can be time-consuming, and the March 7 deadline is rapidly approaching.
“Procrastination is huge in this effort,” Andrade said. “The current scholarships were released at the beginning of January and I’ve gotten maybe 15 completed applications. Then, on March 6, I’ll get thousands and I have to have them in by 4 p.m. when the system shuts down.”
The process begins by finding the right scholarships to apply for, locally and nationally. Some have very specific requirements as to the applicant’s background, such as the Franca Barsi Memorial Scholarship, which is open to direct or indirect victims of domestic violence, or the Chase Zearbaugh Memorial Scholarship for those who have personally experienced the loss of a loved one.
There are scholarships offered by booster organizations for students with interests in specific fields, like the Anna Dolores Perry Nursing Scholarship for prospective nursing majors, the Charlie Presser Memorial Scholarship, for students who plan on attending a trade or technical school, and the San Benito County Cattlewomen’s Scholarship for a student going into agricultural studies.
There are scholarships targeted to current and former members of local sports organizations or school teams, arts and music scholarships, drama scholarships and even one open to any student with a current library card, the Friends of the San Benito county Free Library scholarship.
“With nationwide scholarships,” Andrade said, “you could Google anything you could ever possibly think of, and there’s a scholarship out there for you. I tell my students, ‘Are you left-handed? Google left-handed, and you’ll find a scholarship to apply for.’”
Besides taking the time to find scholarships appropriate for their interests and career plans, students also need to apply for a copy of their transcripts, make a list of all their student activities, prepare a personal statement and, most importantly, find two faculty members and a community member to write letters of recommendation.
“Don’t think you can wait two days before the deadline to ask for your three letters,” Andrade said. “Nothing’s more unprofessional than asking for a letter and saying, ‘I need it in an hour.’ And the staff had to write over 2,000 of those letters last year.”
Career center offers ‘invaluable assistance’
Senior Derek Barnes II has applied for three scholarships already and has his eye on around 20 more that tie into his experiences and interests.
“My father’s an educator,” he said, “so I’m looking for any that relate to parents in education or for future educators. I can apply for the San Benito Stage Company scholarship because I worked with them since I was six. And I am going to school for history, so I am looking for some history-specific scholarships.”
Barnes said that Andrade and the career center provided invaluable assistance to him and other students as they plotted out their scholarship campaigns. They also helped with college applications. He said he took her advice on getting an early start on researching scholarships seriously.
“I definitely think she helped me start a lot sooner,” he said. “I read through the scholarships as soon as I could and was surprised at how many I qualified for. I would have never expected to qualify for 20, but I would not have known without reading through all of them.”
Barnes has looked at some national scholarships that can be located through various websites and apps, but is more focused on local ones.
“I think the nationwide ones are really hard to get,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of people are applying for those, and you won’t have as many resources when applying. I’m just looking at the ones I qualify for locally, and if I get them, I’ll be super excited.”
Barnes said his interest in scholarships comes partly from his concern about being overwhelmed by the burden of student loans, particularly at the current interest rates.
“I don’t want to be stuck in debt for the rest of my life,” he said. “I don’t want to get in debt just to have a career or be in my 50s and still paying off college. I want to enjoy my life.”
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