Is My Mom Right About What It Takes To Get A High School Scholarship? What We Learned
Last Tuesday, I was folding Lila’s muddy soccer practice laundry at the kitchen table, drinking cold coffee out of a chipped mug, when my 16-year-old junior spun her phone around and plopped it down in front of me. “I posted in that high school scholarship thread I joined on Reddit,” she said, voice tight. “I asked, ‘To all those who have gotten high school scholarships, is my mom right?’ Three people already replied. Two say you’re right, one says you’re wrong. What do you say to that?”
The disagreement had been simmering for two weeks. I’d told her that she didn’t need a 4.0 unweighted GPA, 12 AP classes, or a resume full of state-level athletic awards to win a usable scholarship. I told her most of the scholarships worth applying to right now were the small, local, niche ones that 90% of her classmates would skip because they don’t sound big enough to matter. Lila had been arguing with me ever since. The top 10 kids in her class had told her only losers apply for scholarships under $5,000, that if you can’t get a full ride you’re wasting your time, that only the most impressive candidates win anything.
I got a $1,500 scholarship from the local grocery workers union when I was her age, back when I bagged groceries four nights a week and had a 3.3 GPA. No one else from my high school applied that year. I used that money to buy my textbooks for my first two years of community college, and it would’ve been a lot tighter without it. That’s why I thought I knew what I was talking about, but I also admitted to Lila I could be wrong—things change in 20 years, right?
We leaned over the phone together, reading the replies while we waited for our pepperoni pizza to arrive. Our tabby cat stole a sock from the laundry pile and ducked under the table as we scrolled. The first reply was from a 19-year-old who’d gotten a full ride to a state school a year prior: “Your mom is dead wrong. I had a 3.9, started a community food bank, and got rejected from 17 scholarships before I got one. Only the top candidates win, don’t let her tell you different.” The second was from a 20-year-old at a local technical college: “I got a $10,000 welding scholarship from the local trade association and I had a 3.1. Half my class didn’t even know it existed. Your mom is right. Apply to every weird small one no one else wants.” Third was from a 17-year-old senior: “My mom said the same thing, I didn’t believe her, spent six months only applying to big national ones and got zero. I applied to 12 small ones in a month and got two. She was right.”
That thread confirmed what I’d started to figure out as we waded through scholarship applications this year: most parents and kids have it backwards. They see the big, viral full-ride scholarships posted all over TikTok and Instagram, so they put all their energy into those, even when their kid doesn’t check half the boxes. The concrete trick I’ve started sharing with other parents I know who are walking this same path is simple: pull up the list of local scholarships from your high school’s counseling office, then have your kid highlight every scholarship that requires something only a small number of kids have. It doesn’t have to be impressive. If the scholarship is for kids who work part-time at a green industry business, that’s Lila, who works at a local plant shop 12 hours a week. If it’s for left-handed art students, or kids whose parents work for the local school district, or kids going to study early childhood education, that all narrows the applicant pool from thousands to less than 20, sometimes less than 10. That’s a way better shot than any national scholarship with 100,000 applicants fighting for one spot.
Another concrete shift I made with Lila was telling her to stop trying to sound impressive in essays. Early on, she was going to write her local art guild scholarship essay about how she wanted to open a big community pottery studio for underprivileged kids—something that sounded great on paper, but she’d never actually thought about doing before she started writing applications. I told her to write about what she actually does every week after work: she brings home lopsided pottery misfits from the studio, gives them to her coworkers as paperweights, and teaches regulars at the plant shop how to repot succulents in them. That’s what she wrote, and it sounded like her. She didn’t end up getting that one, but she got the $2,000 plant growers association scholarship with an essay about how she learns to talk people down from panicking when they think they’ve killed their pothos, and how that patience translates to every other part of life. No big inspirational story, just real stuff.
It’s been three months since Lila posted that question. She’s applied to six small scholarships so far, and has one $2,000 award in the bank. That’s enough to cover her first semester of books, whatever school she ends up going to. She still doesn’t 100% believe me. Last week she showed me a TikTok of a kid who got a full ride to an Ivy League and said “See? This is what you need to win.” I didn’t argue. I just reminded her that the $2,000 we already have is real, and we wouldn’t have it if we’d waited around for a full ride that may or may not happen.
We’re still applying, still sorting through the weird niche opportunities no one else bothers with. Ask me again this time next year if I was right, and I’ll tell you. For now, we’ve got more money than we did three months ago, and Lila’s learned how to write an essay that sounds like her. That’s already a win, no matter what happens next.
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