Why I Don't Like Scholarships

Tell me you don't actually want to give me a scholarship without telling me you don't want to give me the scholarship.

Questions like "Why should we pick you?"

"What makes you different from the rest?"

I dunno. I've never met the applicants before!

Imagine being an average high school student with no specific talents or accomplishments, you want to go to college, you have a dream you want to work towards. So you look for scholarships after hearing all your teachers talk about it and hear about it over the intercoms during the morning every day.

You pass the writing portion and are called in for an interview only to be met with a panel of people that ask you questions that makes you feel so insignificant, you suddenly feel like you don't qualify for something you should qualify for- being poor.

I realized then, ah, because I don't have any accomplishments I shouldn't have even considered applying for any.

I get it.

People don't want to give away money to kids who will squander it, they want to give it away to a kid who knows what they want. But how can you judge for certain whether or not a kid knows what they want within one conversation?

To be honest, I freaked out during the interview from the questions, half the reason was that I had a hard time describing my boring otaku, writer- wannabe self and half because of the people.

I had no idea one of my English teachers that I respected would be there. And when I was asked who was "one of my favorite teachers" that's one of the questions I could answer and say it was him. I will admit my real favorite was another teacher, but he had left the school so he was the next person. But it was embarrassing because it looked like I was clutching at straws. I did not even want to go to school anymore after that interview because I knew I failed the interview miserably yet would still have to see him for the rest of the year until graduation.

I made the mistake of thinking scholarships were like grants. However, with scholarships, people aren't going to give it to you just cause you need it.

And when you finally do get a scholarship, one that you didn't have to have an interview for. It's met with conditions, and is also super shady. When you're told you're being giving a certain amount, it doesn't specify whether or not this amount will decrease throughout the year so when it suddenly happens you're caught off guard.

Many reading this will argue that's why you need to research scholarships but even so, being told you qualify for one, but not being told the specifics... that's already pretty sus.

Why does the person need to research the different types of scholarships? Isn't that something the college should tell the student?

That's like expecting a new employee to know the inner workings of a company's trade secrets when they've never worked there in their life.

Don't even get me started on some of these colleges.

Some colleges have bookstores that have such expensive prices for their books but some will also have the audacity to sell poor quality laptops that couldn't last a year without falling apart or malfunctioning. I get the college needs the money but why con the poor students?

By educating the student you're giving them tools to tackle life, but you mean to tell me the tools you sell in your stores can't even help me make it past a year? For those wondering it was a community college but still.

However, the one that decreased the amount out of the blue was a university. I've already considered the factors of probably not enrolling in the right amount of classes, but that's only because some of the classes I needed were full, and had to look elsewhere. I still tried to enroll full time but I suppose it wasn't enough, since I had transferred some of my credits and needed to complete a certain type of class. I will admit the rush for classes was an experience new to me since one, I didn't live on campus at my old college and had the experience of witnessing the site slow down or shut me out due to the number of students online when I lived on campus at my new one (if you're wondering why I didn't try enrolling in a class earlier it's because I tried but the site wouldn't let me as it wasn't time yet).

Why is keeping a scholarship so difficult? Why can't they just be like grants? Something that's guaranteed, something that helps, not something that stresses you out, and something you have to continue to compete for even after you get it.