Summer Scholarship Preparation

Scholarship preparation continues, school or no school. Sure, school’s out for the summer, but scholarship preparation shouldn’t stop.

Many students think summer is for spending time with friends and relaxing. Time to throw the schedule out the window. They’re partly right. However, it’s also the perfect time to add to the scholarship preparation.

Some students will have a summer job, even if it means working for the family. Still, with the longer days, there’s plenty of time for lounging, and goofing with friends after work.

With a summer job, and time with friends taking up most of a day, students may want to put school, and studying completely out of mind for the summer months. That’s a mistake. No, it’s not necessary to spend eight, or four, even two hours a day studying. However, it is important to keep the college scholarship goal in mind.

First, scholarship hopefuls should have an ongoing list of their activities and accomplishments. Summer activities need to be added to this list. Whether it’s a summer job (and the responsibilities), travel with the family, participation in summer athletic programs, or church activities, all are important and need to be included.

In most cases, not everything on the “list” will be used at scholarship time. However, it’s better for a student to have several options to choose from, than to try to stretch a few activities to fill all the blanks.

Second, there’s summer reading. Sure there are the fun, light-weight books everyone reads during the summer. However, students looking for scholarships need to read one of the Ayn Rand Books. Students in the ninth and tenth grader need to read, ANTHEM. THE FOUNTAINHEAD, is the book for eleventh and twelfth grade students. The Ayn Rand foundation found here,

Sponsors scholarships based on essays about the two books. Scholarships range in value from $30 to $10,000. Student must read the book for their grade, choose a question, which is posted on the web page, write and submit the essay. The contest deadline is in March 2009, so there’s plenty of time. However, once school starts students will be busy with other projects, they may not have time to read, and write a thoughtful compelling essay.

The third thing students need do add to their summer list, is preparing for the PSAT which we will discuss further in another post.

For now, students need to have a good summer, and remember to take a few minutes each day for scholarship preparation.