Even after people have committed to their future colleges, the application process is not over. An overlooked, but integral aspect of the college application process is the scholarship application process. With tuition increasing every year, scholarships are becoming increasingly important.
According to a study by the Education Data Initiative, over half of Americans who complete an undergraduate program use federal loans at one point in their college education and 42.7 million student borrowers have federal loan debt. Not only does student stress increase throughout college due to the rigor of college education, but also due to financial stress.
Scholarships can lessen this financial burden, but these scholarships do not come without their own added level of stress. It is more likely for students to receive scholarships when they put in the work to write essays and resumes, or prepare for interviews than those where students can apply without additional work. The odds of winning no-essay scholarships with large amounts of money is akin to winning a lottery.
Senior Angelise Pagan stated, “... I feel like if I don’t do them, I’ll be in debt. I don’t want to do them because they take so much time out of my busy schedule, but I need to.”
Scholarships affect students not only in the present, but in the future. When students do not receive scholarships, their future-selves suffer because of it. High school survey participants were asked to rank their stress levels linked to scholarship applications on a scale of one to five, with one being the least stressed and five being the most stressed. Zero percent of students reported ones and twos, 19% reported threes, 38.1% reported fours, and 42.9% reported fives.
When asked if scholarship applications have contributed to stress, Logan St Hilaire stated, “Yes, because they add a whole other layer to applications after college and it is for money that can significantly impact my journey through college and how I come out of it.”
Student loans carry extremely high interest rates. Having the ability to pay money early-on reduces the total amount of money students will need to pay in the future. According to the U.S. News & World Report, the average college student graduates with about $30,000 in student loans, which is a 25% increase from only a decade ago. The competitive nature of getting into college paired with the competitive nature of scholarships increases anxiety and stress levels in high school students.
“I am very stressed about choosing a school, and finances are a big part of that. It sucks because I don’t qualify for any type of scholarship. Not for my major, financial situation, my grades, nothing,” says senior Maeve Willett.
Willett is one of many students who does not qualify to apply for scholarships. Unfortunately, scholarships have specific requirements that many students are unable to meet, including academic requirements, extracurricular activities, financial need, and major-specific scholarships. Search Logistics states that only four percent of students with GPAs ranging from 3.5 to 4.0 receive scholarships, regardless of their achievements in school. Only one in eight students in college receive scholarships, and 97% of the students who do receive scholarships receive less than $2,500.
Fellow senior Briana Alves and St. Hilaire were asked about their confidence in receiving scholarships they applied to. Alves replied, “Um, mostly not. I feel like a lot of them haven’t gotten back to me at all. I’m only confident about one of them out of the eight I applied to” and St. Hilaire replied, “No, not really. They’re all unlikely to be gotten, and they’re all highly sought after.”
Public schools often assist students in this application process, though students at Nashua High School North have mixed opinions about whether or not they got the guidance they needed. St. Hilaire believed that since they had scholarship workshops and the community scholarship, NHSN “did their part”.
Charlie Patterson stated “Sort of. I was pleased with the community scholarship application because it was very easy, but besides that, I still had to do a lot of it myself.”
Pagan agreed with Patterson, and added that “...They did talk about the scholarship workshop on the announcements, and I went to that, but they are just giving the resources of what scholarships there are. You individually have to look into it more to see whether or not you qualify.”
Willett felt very strongly about the fact that NHSN did not help with her college or scholarship application experience, as she left with the feeling of being put down rather than being uplifted.
“They did nothing for me. I got no help with college, and I left with more questions than I came in with. I was told that I wasn’t going to get into good schools, and that even community college would be a stretch for me, yet I got into a school with a 28% rate,” Willett stated.
High school seniors are continually feeling the pressure to apply to scholarships, yet many feel that they do not meet the eligibility to apply to scholarships suggested to them, do not have people who are willing to help them on an individual level, and have low hopes about actually receiving these small sums of money from money scholarships they managed to apply to. High schools must be aware of the stress their students are going through, especially as seniors, to help them navigate this stressful application process.
