Minority Scholarships: A Guide for Students?

Answer 1

With the rising costs of education, all students can benefit from financial assistance for school. For students who are also minorities, minority scholarships are a valuable source of funds that can enable them to attend school and reach their goals when they might not have been able to otherwise.

Who Qualifies?

Opportunities are available for a wide range of minorities, including women, Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans and others. Simply being a minority is rarely enough to ensure receipt of a scholarship, however. Most scholarships carry a number of requirements, such as exceptional academic performance, eligibility for financial aid and high grade point average. In some cases, programs require students to provide proof of their minority status for scholarship qualification. Examples of this include many Native American scholarships, which frequently require students to show that their genetic makeup is a certain percentage Native American or of a certain tribe.

Minority Scholarship Tips

Minority students interested in minority scholarships should work to maintain excellent grades from the time they enter high school. It is often best to start looking for desirable scholarships long before senior year, when increased competition can make it much more challenging to be chosen. Engagement in extracurricular activities is strongly encouraged as it enhances the minority student's perceived value as a potential representative of scholarships they are applying for.

Completing Applications

When filing their applications, students should take care to be as thorough as possible, making copies of applications and reviewing them after completion. Due to intense competition, sending an incomplete application could easily result in losing the chance to receive the scholarship in question. Finally, students should always mail their scholarship applications with tracking to be sure they arrive safely.

Minority scholarships are excellent opportunities for qualified students belonging to minority groups to attend college. These scholarships level the playing field for disadvantaged students and benefit everyone on campus by enriching the cultural environment. These reasons make minority scholarships winning strategies for giving all students, and particularly minorities, an edge in their education and future.