The vast majority of first-time scholarship searchers believe they either have to be brilliant or belong to certain ethnic, racial, religious, or financial communities in order to qualify for merit, need, or identity-based scholarships.
I prefer to think about organizations and individuals who have created scholarship opportunities as generous entities that wish to support people based on their own sense of community. Organized or not, communities reach broader groups of people than individual definitions of identity. Communities consist of people who share common experiences, interests, professional and/or personal goals, as well as larger social beliefs or value systems.
Organizations or individuals who create community-based scholarship opportunities define community as they see fit. As you search for scholarships, it is up to you to learn how to identify broad definitions of community that you may share with organizations.
Below I’ve generated three examples of different kinds of communities as defined by various scholarship-providing organizations. These include, but are not limited to, heritage, professional, and regional communities.
Once you have a sense of the true breadth of definitions for the term community, you will find that you belong to several different kinds of communities, and within each one there may be an organization that wishes to support you to achieve your goals.
1. ¡Lánzate!
This partnership between Southwest Airlines and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) offers students of Hispanic descent the opportunity to win free flights to and from university.
Type of Community: Heritage
Award Amount: Up to four round-trip e-passes that cover airfare to and from university
Deadline: April 30, 2019
Notable Eligibility Requirements:
• Student must be enrolled in a college/university at least 200 miles from their permanent home.
• Student must have a minimum 2.5 GPA.
• Student must identify direct or parental ties to a specific country to determine Hispanic origin on the application.
What can we learn from this scholarship?
¡Lánzate! is part of a collection of scholarships housed under the HACU, an association that partners with businesses like Ford, Oracle, and Miller Lite to distribute funding for Hispanic communities across the United States. There are awards of all shapes and sizes, including the $5000 Café Bustelo El Café del Futuro Scholarship, due May 24, 2019.
While the Hispanic community is what holds this particular group of scholarships together, the organizations that have decided to contribute funding for these scholarships don’t have very much in common with each other. In fact, these same companies have probably partnered with other communities to create different types of scholarships.
Finally, HACU is not the only foundation or organization that gathers around the Hispanic community. Other organizations include the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC), also known as Great Minds in STEM (GMiS).
2. 2019 Rizio Liberty Lipinsky Lawyer Scholarship
The Rizio Liberty Lipinsky law firm created an essay contest that aims to support future lawyers by paying for $10,000 of tuition for law school.
Type of Community: Professional
Award Amount: $10,000
Deadline: May 1, 2019
Essay Prompt: For the inaugural Rizio Liberty Lipinsky Law Scholarship, we want to learn why you’re pursuing a career in law. In an essay of 1,000 words or less, please tell us what inspired you to pursue a law degree, what you hope to accomplish upon graduation, and why it is important to you to fight for the rights of your fellow citizens.
Notable Eligibility Requirements
• Open to future law students who have accepted admission into law school for the 2019/2020 academic year
• Also open to current law school students who will still be in law school throughout the 2019/2020 year
What can we learn from this scholarship?
This kind of scholarship results from the fact that professional communities (like the legal community) wish to support future practitioners. Many law firms across the United States have created similar opportunities to win awards of varying amounts. Several law schools collect lists of awards created by law firms on the financial aid pages of their websites, but you have to look for them. One of my favorites is this list created by University of Virginia Law School, which organizes essay-writing opportunities by deadline.
Most students that I work with think that community-based scholarships revolve solely around ethnic, racial, or religious identities. Identifying a professional community is one more place to search for financial support, and Rizio Liberty is just one example of this kind of scholarship.
3. Ralph Hale and Martha L. Ruppert Educational Scholarship
This scholarship awards 30 scholarships of up to $10,000 each to students who are “late bloomers.” The Rupperts define late bloomers as students who show academic promise and improvement during the last years of high school or in the first few years of college, but are unlikely to receive other scholarships because of low GPAs.
Type of Community: Regional
Award Amount: Up to $10,000
Deadline: February 20, 2020
Notable Eligibility Requirements
• Maximum cumulative grade point average of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale
• Graduating high school senior or graduate of a public or private high school in San Mateo County, San Francisco County, or Santa Clara County
• For those pursuing undergraduate studies at community colleges, vocational schools, and two or four-year universities
What can we learn from this scholarship?
I love this scholarship for a number of reasons.
First of all, it has a maximum GPA as part of the eligibility requirement. The folks who created this award understand that education is a life-long process of learning and growth, and they want to support individuals who understand that, too. Many of my students talk themselves out of applying for scholarships because they think that the brightest, smartest, and most accomplished people are the only people who win scholarship awards.
One of the reasons that I push students to identify the communities that they belong to, care about, and that care about them is because people give money away for all kinds of reasons. You never know what a person will prioritize in life, and it is refreshing to know that there are people like the Rupperts who value process and personal growth over crowning achievements.
Second of all, this scholarship is a regionally-focused scholarship. The Rupperts have decided to fund people from certain counties in California, and they’ve identified an overarching organization called the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to house their scholarship. Given that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation administers a number of other scholarships that support California communities, the opportunities offered have residence-based eligibility requirements that are as broad as all of California, and as narrow as East Palo Alto.
When you search for giving organizations based on geographic or regional affiliations, you can think as broadly as country, coast, or state, and as narrowly as region, county, or city. Once you find an organization that houses a cluster of regionally-based opportunities, chances are that you will be eligible for more than one of their listed scholarships.
In Conclusion
These are just a few examples of community-based scholarship opportunities, there are so many more! Which communities do you belong to? Which ones do you care about? Who do you think cares about you? And why? Start asking yourself these questions and you are well on the way to finding out about communities you never knew existed!
Do you need help applying for graduate school scholarships? We can help you with that, as well as any other step in the grad school admissions process. Learn more about our services here.
Related Resources:
• 5 Fatal Flaws to Avoid in Your Grad School Statement of Purpose, a free guide
• Awards! Grants! Scholarships! Oh My! a podcast episode
• What Is a Scholarship? And Why Didn’t I Get One?