College Prep: What to Do While You Wait for Your Acceptance Letter
So you’ve finally sent off your perfectly-packaged college application. You finished polishing the essay you’ve been working on for a month. Your teachers submitted their letters of recommendation. You finally got to hit that send button. It’s an exciting feeling to know that your destiny is right around the corner. But what do you do now? While you wait for that beautiful acceptance letter to show up in your inbox, here are some things you can focus on.
Relax (a little)
We totally get it - college applications are a huge commitment. It’s like a giant (really important) class project that you’ve finally finished, so please take a moment to pat yourself on the back, binge a Netflix show, and not think about your future for a couple of days.
But don’t get too carried away. After all, it’s still your senior year, and your life is about to change a whole lot. It’s time to get all your ducks in a row, starting with the few below…
Complete Your Financial Aid Application
You don’t have to wait until you’re accepted to a school to make a plan for how to pay for it. The first step is to complete your application for financial aid. To begin, you’ll need to complete the FAFSA form, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. You’ll fill out the FAFSA every year before starting another year of college, and the government will use this application to tell you how much government aid you qualify for. Government tuition aid is delivered to students in three forms: loans, grants, and federal work study opportunities.
Loans:
Federal student loans are still money you borrow, but they generally have much kinder interest rates than private student loans and offer graduated repayment options that allow you to start repayment with smaller payments that gradually get bigger over time. Any student loan is money that you will have to pay back eventually, but federal student loans are generally an okay option for students looking to fund their education. Nevertheless, you still want to avoid taking out loans at all costs: federal and private alike.
Grants:
Grants are like scholarships in that they don’t have to be repaid later, but they’re awarded based on financial need. You can receive grants through the government as part of FAFSA, or you can receive grants through your new school. There are some different types of grants that you could be eligible for, so make sure to do your research of both federal grants and grants through your specific institution. For example, Federal Pell Grants make up the majority of grant money awarded to students and are awarded based solely on financial need.
Work Study:
If you qualify for it, a work study is a part-time job that you will have on campus at your college. Maybe you’ll work in the cafeteria plating food, in the Humanities department making copies and helping professors prep for classes, in the fitness center cleaning equipment and gym mats, or something similar. Regardless of what specific job you’re assigned (the college will generally decide this for you, but they may ask you to list your preferences), the pay for the job will be directly applied to your tuition costs rather than put into your hand. So it’s basically a job that it seems like you complete for free, but it’s actually deducting from your total student loan cost. For example, you might be awarded $2,000 a year in work study pay, so throughout the year you need to make sure to work enough hours to add up to $2,000 total compensation. You can’t go over the amount allotted, and if you end up not working enough hours and you make under the total $2,000 amount, you’ll then have to pay the remaining amount back to the college later.
Apply for Scholarships
This is an optional but potentially very beneficial step to the entire college application process. Scholarships are free money that someone gives to you to be used toward your education. FREE MONEY. That’s amazing, so you should definitely run after any scholarship opportunities that you can find that you qualify for.
Every year, millions of dollars in scholarship money never gets awarded to anyone. Yet, finding scholarships can be incredibly frustrating. There are three main places we recommend focusing your search: your local community, directly from the colleges you’re applying to, and outside private scholarships.
School Scholarships: A great place to start is the schools where you’ve applied or plan to apply. Once you know what colleges you plan to apply to, do some research on their tuition and scholarship packages. Visit the Financial Aid and Tuition pages of the colleges’ websites. Many schools will offer automatic scholarships for certain students who meet a specific test score and GPA threshold, and there are many other grants and scholarships that will vary from school to school. Make sure you know what is available at the schools you’ll apply to, and if there is a scholarship that you qualify for, make sure that you know the steps you need to take to be considered for it. Many scholarships will require a separate application from your standard college app.
Outside Scholarships: There are TONS of scholarships that people and companies offer to students going off to pursue their undergraduate degrees. Do some research to see if you can find scholarships that you qualify for. Furthermore, expand your research to outside your community. If you’re involved in a specific group or have a history of working for a particular cause, it’s possible that you could find many scholarships that fit with your background. Once you find scholarships that you qualify for, most scholarship applications simply include filling out a form and writing an essay. Take your time and make sure you submit a strong application because scholarships are competitive. Every penny that you can save on your college education will pay off in the long term because that is money that you won’t have to pay anyone back, and it will therefore not be subject to interest.
Start local: It’s possible that your local community and community businesses will have information on local scholarships that you could qualify for. Talk to your high school guidance counselor or college counselor about local scholarships — they should know about the majority of those offered. These scholarships will generally be less competitive than scholarships that are open to students residing in larger geographical areas, so these are great opportunities that students should make sure to take advantage of.
Once you’ve exhausted your local resources, start to broaden your search to scholarships offered throughout the country. You can do this with the help of several websites and scholarship search tools that are available on the internet.
Below are some great sites that might be helpful for your scholarship search. For most of these sites, you’ll be prompted to create an account and answer questions about yourself to help the site determine what scholarships you might be a match for. This is super helpful, as you’re going to find TONS of scholarships that you DON’T qualify for (many scholarships are insanely specific — one $10,000 scholarships presented to an incoming college freshman that is a female playing on the tennis team of College XYZ). These tools can help you focus your time on those scholarships you DO qualify for and avoid reading through those you don’t.
Scholarship Locator Websites
College Board Scholarship Locator
Sallie Mae Scholarship Search & College Planning
There are many other sites out there like those noted above. We’ve picked some trusted sites from established companies that are prominent in the higher education scene. No matter how you go about it, work hard trying to find scholarships that you qualify for. There is NO LIMIT to the number of scholarships you can apply for when the money is coming from sources other than directly from the school. With that being said, the more scholarships you find, the more scholarships you can apply for, and the more money you can potentially win in scholarship awards and thus save on your education.
Keep Working on Your Grades & Extracurriculars
Even though your applications have been sent off, it doesn’t mean it’s time to completely slack and let your grades falter. Yet, it’s not necessary to keep cramming your schedule with AP classes either. Now is the time to maintain your awesome grades, or, if necessary, work a little harder to boost them.
Similarly, this is a great time to continue to be involved in your school and community. Colleges love when students are very involved in their schools’ programs and organizations. Even more, we think YOU will be happy that you took this time leading up to graduation to further connect with your peers and be a present part of your community. After all, graduation is looming, and this chapter will all be over soon.
While this may feel like an awesome time to be lazy, we think it’s a period of relative calm that you can use to your advantage. After all, let’s face it, college is expensive. You will be very grateful that you started thinking about paying for it early. Planning ahead will help make sure you know what to expect for tuition costs and how that will affect you down the road after you’ve graduated with your degree. Additionally, you’ll have so much time to dedicate to finding and applying to scholarships and being an active member of your school community. Future you will thank you!
Good luck, and happy prepping!
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