scholarship

Do you have a desire for the best education for your child? Have you checked the fees of the best universities and are scared because you can’t afford them? Your child can get a scholarship and that dream can become a reality.

Deliberate preparation is needed, and it doesn’t begin when the child is in senior secondary. It begins as soon as the child gets into secondary school.

Give the child a heads up.
Let the child know what is possible if he or she works hard. There is nothing like a dream to keep us working hard in order to achieve. Let the child know that its not an easy task but they can achieve this.

Focus on good grades
Your child needs to be consistent in keeping the grades up. It may not necessarily be all As but fairly good grades all round. It’s not the only criteria, but it helps at the selection stage.

Your child needs a hobby
This is so important , because the school doesn’t want to admit a child who is only about grades, the schools want a well rounded individual. This will answer the question ‘what do you do outside school?’ It can be swimming, painting, writing poetry, or whatever your child is interested in.

Get a holiday job
Work experience is something admission committees like to see. It doesn’t have to be extensive work. It shows that the child is disciplined, hardworking and a bit mature. This scores points with the school.

Volunteer
Volunteering can be valuable experience for your child, as it helps the child to look beyond himself and grow up. The lessons learnt from volunteering or community work are invaluable. It could even be setting up a system to collect used textbooks from schools and give to indigent students in public schools, it could be setting up a reading club for children up to a certain age, and the list goes on. Helping an elderly Neighbour wash, clean , or run errands in the neighborhood. The earlier your child starts accumulating volunteer hours, the better.

Keep a record
It’s important to document these experiences as the years roll by, so describing them on the application can be rich and full of details, and it will be easy to have a winning scholarship application. You can take pictures, save messages of appreciation from the beneficiaries of the volunteer work. Essentially build a dossier for your child’s application over the years. It’s not something that can be done in a few months. There has to be a pattern seen.

Keep all certificates and awards
All these, recommendation letters and appreciation letters should be kept safe. You can scan and send to your mail box so you have a back up. You can upload with your child’s application

Check for colleges
It’s not too early for your child to begin to check colleges that offer the course of interest and their admission and scholarship requirements. Find outTuition fees, living expenses and all so you how much scholarship they need. Zero in on 5 colleges initially.

Apply for scholarships
Not every scholarship body requires the child to have finished with secondary school before applying. It means waiting to finish will deny that child the opportunity to apply for that scholarship. Some scholarship bodies take almost a year to process applications.

Scholarships are available for most schools , but to access them we need prepare ahead. There is no shortcut to that. Check school deadlines for scholarship applications.

Finally don’t forget to register with some scholarship sites so you can get updates on current available scholarships funded by other bodies apart from your child’s school.

Quick links

www.scholarshipportal.com
www.opportunitiesforafricans.com
www.afterschoolafrica.com
www.scholars4dev.com

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