Types of Scholarships

Regardless of if you are a freshman or senior in high school, you can start looking at scholarships to apply for. In this blog post, we will cover the 5 main categories of scholarships not only available on our website, but also seen across many other scholarship search tools. 

Subject Based
Subject Based scholarships are any scholarships that may require you to write an essay about that particular subject area. These can often take the form of competition-like scholarships, where you must demonstrate a skill related to the subject in order to win the scholarship. Examples of subjects in these scholarships are STEM, English/Arts, Music, Humanities, etc. 

Merit Based
Merit Based scholarships are based on your transcript/GPA and even on your SAT or ACT scores. These scholarships tend to look at your application in a holistic manner, often even asking for volunteer hours and extracurricular involvement. Although these scholarships may have longer application timelines, they are surely based on your hard work through high school. 

Quick 
Quick scholarships is a category we have defined as taking less than 10 minutes to apply for. This can include “No Essay” scholarships and those scholarships that require you to make an account with a company in order to be considered. These scholarships are often based on a raffle like system and will not take into account your achievements throughout high school. 

Financial Need Based
Financial Need Based scholarships are generally based on your household income. These scholarships tend to have a limited application pool since it is restricted to household income. You may have to submit financial-need proof in order to be considered for these scholarships. Many of these scholarships also fall into the Merit Based scholarships. 

Ethnicity/Race Based 
Ethnicity/Race Based scholarships are generally available to certain genders, religion followers, or races/ethnicities. Like Financial Need Based scholarships, these will also tend to have a limited application pool since there are restrictions as to who can and cannot apply. 

Of course, there are so many more categories of scholarships, however these are some of the main ones that you may keep your eye out for! 

Let us know down in the comments if you have any comments on what scholarships you are planning on applying for!