Full Scholarship List – Praise from a Parent

I received an awesome email a couple days ago from a parent who downloaded the Full Scholarship List.  Her daughter was a National Merit Semi-Finalist.  She hadn’t found any schools that would offer full-ride scholarships for national merit semi-finalists.  She was so proud of her daughter for achieving such an honor, but wasn’t sure how they were going to pay for college.  Then she did a web search that brought up an article I wrote on full-ride scholarships and referred to the Full Scholarship List.  She took a chance on it.  On the list, she found Florida A&M University (FAMU) and they offered her daughter a full-ride scholarship.

FAMU offers full-ride scholarships for in-state freshmen who have achieved at least a 27 ACT score or 1800 SAT score and have a 3.5 unweighted high school GPA.  FAMU also offers full-rides plus a $500 book stipend for in-state freshmen who are National Merit Finalists, National Achievement Finalists, National Merit Semi-Finalists, or National Achievement Semi-Finalists. Out-of-state students with the same credentials earn full tuition plus fees unless they are National Achievement Semi-Finalists, Finalists or Scholars.  These students will receive a full-ride plus extras.

Receiving the email from this mom validated that the hard work I put into creating the Full Scholarship List was all worth it.  I felt that parents needed a resource to be able to find full-ride scholarships and full-tuition scholarships for top students.  I wasn’t finding any complete list online that included all three types:  national merit scholarship opportunities, automatic merit-based scholarships and competitive merit-based scholarships.  Over a six-month period, I spent nights and weekends working on the list.  My husband and kids thought I was nuts!  I found a few partial lists online to get me started, but I had to look up every school and every scholarship online to make sure they were still valid.  Then I spent time looking for additional schools that offer full-ride and full-tuition scholarships.  I know there are more out there and I plan to keep looking and keep adding to my list.

I knew that charging for my list, even though it is only $2.99, would scare away a lot of interested parties, but I have a larger purpose in mind.  As I explain on the Full Scholarship List page, I wanted a way for the My Kid’s College Choice website to support itself and I wanted to be able to offer a scholarship to students who didn’t have a full-ride opportunity.  In the two months the list has been available, I have earned enough for the yearly maintenance of the site and I am starting to reserve funds for a scholarship.  My plan is to announce the scholarship opportunity around the end of the year.  I am not sure yet how big I will be able to make it, but as a parent, I know that every scholarship helps.  To earn the scholarship, I will be looking for high school seniors to write an article, that I can publish on My Kid’s College Choice, about their college search experience.  I will put more definition around exactly what I am looking for when the time comes.

In the meantime, I know I need to work on getting the Full Scholarship List out to a wider audience.  So far, people have only found it through web searches that brought up my articles on full-ride scholarships and personal referrals.  If you have any great ideas around how I can reach more parents and students, please leave me a comment.

Whether you have purchased the Full Scholarship List or whether you are just interested in my articles, thank you for your support and if I can help you further in your kid’s college choice process, leave me a comment or use the Contact Me form.