How to Motivate Your Teen to Get a Scholarship

This is a sponsored post. All opinions on how to motivate your teen to get a scholarship are 100% my own.

College is becoming increasingly important all the time to the future of any job seeker. But college tuition rates continue to spiral upwards each year. For this reason, encouraging your teen to find and get a scholarship can save many thousands of dollars over the course of their college career. Here are some tips to motivate your teen in snagging a cost-saving scholarship.

college

How to Motivate Your Teen To Get A Scholarship

Start the Process Early

I can’t state the importance of this one. Your teen needs to start the scholarship hunt early and stick with it as they narrow down their perspectives.  One of the best ways to increase their chances is to participate in extracurricular activities. There are lots of community-based activities that can be explored in most high school areas.

Be sure to encourage your teen to assume a leadership role in their scholastic career. This will make them stand out among a sea of potential recruits. You know you are doing it right if your teen has done most of the work by the end of their junior year. You definitely do not want to wait until they are a senior before taking the scholarship preparation serious.

In fact, many of the largest scholarships have a deadline early in the student’s senior year. This is timed to purposely weed out any last minute scramblers and to get the students that are serious about the collegiate career.

While searching, be sure to cast a wide search net. There are many scholarships out there, such as the one at Danny Errico, so take your time and do your research,

Besides, you’ll want to start early and have everything in place by the start of the senior year so that the student can enjoy their final year of high school. You’ll want them them to have good memories of this time, not have it filled with panic and anxiety about college.

scholarship

Explain Your Financial Situation to your Teen

One of the best ways to motivate your teen to try for scholarships is by sharing with them any information about the family’s financial situation. A scholarship can help to ease the burden for both the family and the student. One great tool to use in understanding the expected family contribution can be found at finaid.org.

Be prepared to lay out everything to your teen, including all debts and other financial responsibilities. Donlt forget to include any siblings in the family since they contribute to the financial burden being carried. It is important to make your teen understand a clear picture of the situation, and how it impacts both the student’s and family’s future.

You might be surprised to learn that your teen had assumed that you were much more financially well off than it is the reality of your situation.

You have to remember that in many cases the teen has had you there as financial support for their entire life, and you have provided for the bulk of their needs and wants.

It is easy for them to get caught up in this support mechanism, and they may not realize just how taxed the finances have been in providing them a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. It can be a rude awakening, so be gentle.

When it comes to motivating your teen to find a scholarship, the most important tools you have is to start early and be very transparent about the financial situation. While not everyone will find that dream scholarship to the perfect school, it is certain that you won’t get it if you don’t plan to try for it. Even if you don’t win a big scholarship, even a smaller can be a huge financial relief as time goes on. And that can make all the difference in a college career.