#192 Scholarship Strategy: What To Do Each Year of High School with Dave Peterson Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:00
Want to make college more affordable, but not sure when to start applying for scholarships or how to help your students stand out from ninth grade through senior year is a smart, strategic path that can boost your child’s chances of earning real money for college. It’s easy to assume scholarships are only for seniors, but that belief can limit your students options and leave money on the table. That’s why I’m thrilled to welcome back to the podcast Dave Peterson, also known as the scholarship coach. His own Son, graduated college nearly debt free thanks to a strategic scholarship approach, and now Dave guides other families to do the same. In this episode, we’ll walk through exactly what students should be doing at each stage of high school to become a strong scholarship candidate, from building a fit to scholarship FTS personal narrative to knowing which big name awards open up during junior year, this conversation is packed with actionable guidance. If you’ve been wondering how to make scholarships part of your family’s routine without it taking over your lives, then this episode’s for you. I’m Lisa Mark Robinson, I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:19
Dave Peterson, number three, welcome back to the show.

Dave Peterson 2:23
Thank you so much for having me back. I have been excited to do this since I found out we were going to have episode three, and really looking forward to this conversation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:32
Well, your episodes are always resonating with our our listeners. Paying for College is a real struggle, yeah, and you make it more affordable with your approach and so, well, it just makes sense to have you back again. Well, thank you. So you’re previously, and I’m gonna, I’m looking at my notes here. Previously we talked about first, the first time you were on episode 128, so flourish, coachingco.com/forward, slash 128, winning scholar college scholarships. Expert tips with scholarship coach. So you just kind of like gave the overview, like, Okay, if you want to get if you want to be successful, like your family was. And then we should say,

Dave Peterson 3:20
Yeah, I mean, all but 1500 bucks for my son’s college degree, and that was covered tuition, room, board, books, fees, the whole nine yards, except for 1500

Lisa Marker-Robbins 3:29
bucks, amazing, yeah, if you want to know, like, what the tips are that people can glean to help get them to that aspirational ideal that you had 128 but then we talked about and, and this is, I’m gonna say 161 will probably always be my favorite between the two, okay, because it was boost your teens personal narrative before applications. And that is so at the heart of what both of us do.

Dave Peterson 3:58
Yes, Yep, absolutely. And so

Lisa Marker-Robbins 4:02
everybody needs to listen to that flourish, coachingco.com, forward slash, 161, 100% I mean, because that episode gives you, I don’t even care if you’re like, your kid’s not going to college, but they’re going to go to trade school or an employee training program or anything that they’re going to be applying to, they have to have a strong personal narrative, right?

Dave Peterson 4:24
Absolutely, yeah, whether it’s trade school internships, of course, college admissions and scholarships, it really does come down to that personal narrative. And, you know, I just ran my numbers for my class of 2025, cohort, and that was, that was the biggest factor, was the students with the strongest personal narrative won the most scholarships. One other factor, and this is kind of a pro tip, the students whose parents were involved in the process more also won more scholarships. And that doesn’t mean the parents were writing essays or filling out applications, yes, not writing up. Applications or filling out essays, but they were emailing me with questions, and they were saying, you know, even things like, we haven’t won anything yet, or should we give up? And so I had to be a bit of a motivator, which I had to motivate the parent who would then motivate the student and the ones who stuck with it and had that personal narrative and just realized this is a process. This is not a one and done thing that the numbers just bear it out.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:28
You know what we see? The same thing we do a monthly we call it our launch, live Q and A every month. And sometimes even parents will come when their kids can’t come. We record them so everybody gets active. Gets access to that. Sure, I’ve had parents and kids who are, you know, feel like they’re walking on eggshells with each other, because that happens sometimes where the parents logging in on one device in a different room in the house, and then the kids in a on another device. But that parental involvement absolutely makes a difference. And I’ve even seen one of the things that we teach people to do is how to put together a really effective LinkedIn, and then how to leverage LinkedIn for both research and building connections. But in July and then in the previous month, in June, I two parents up leveled their own LinkedIn profile because they’re like, you know, attending the Q and A this month kind of drove home the fact that I needed to pay attention to my profile a little bit better. And I’m like, oh, that’s been, that’s been fun to watch. So it’s a family journey, right? 100%

Dave Peterson 6:32
and you’re convicting me here. I need to update my profile. My LinkedIn presence is close to zero.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:41
Well, as a friend of the show, I will send you my guide on how to, oh, sweet, just remind me when we get off, yeah, I just, I’m regular. I’m like, Oh, this is fun. We’re inspiring parents to do better, and we’re inspiring kids, yeah, you know, and by kids, I mean 15 to 25 Yeah, okay. But what we’re going to talk about this time is the timeline? I mean, it’s, we’re getting into the start of the school year here. It’s, I know it’s various dates around the country, but when we, right now, are putting this out in September. By now, everybody’s back to school, so we’re thinking about, yeah, what’s the timing of all the things I need to do this year? So this is so timely. Yeah, so where do you want to start? Are we going to, like, start with seniors and work backwards? Are we going to start with,

Dave Peterson 7:28
let’s start with ninth grade. Yeah, let’s start with ninth grade. And the first thing I’ll say is that we could start earlier. People are very surprised to even find out there are scholarships for ninth graders. But believe it or not, there’s scholarships for middle school and grade school. So this is not where you have to start. And if you are starting later, that’s okay too. But if you want to start even earlier, there are plenty of opportunities for younger students. So just keep that in mind that yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 7:54
like, I’ve ever, I’ve heard you say that I knew you were going to say, well, we could screw that kindergarten, yeah, but we’re not going to no my question, I’m going to ask that I’ve never asked before is, when you say there are scholarships for freshmen or sophomores or younger Middle School, does that mean that that there’s a scholarship that’s only going to be awarded to freshmen applicants? Or are there, or is it now, freshmen are also eligible, along with upperclassmen. Like, what? What does that mean?

Dave Peterson 8:28
Yeah, I think for the most part, it’s that freshmen are also eligible, okay? And I will also say that does not mean that those seniors just dominate. I worked with a student last year who won a $5,000 scholarship as a high school sophomore. I worked with a student a couple years ago who won $2,500 as a freshman, and that student’s brother won $2,500 as a fourth grader. Yeah. So I mean, the main reason to start applying for scholarships in ninth grade, in my opinion, is to to get better at it. You know, you have to start somewhere, and you’re not going to be a great applicant your first time. But it’s not like there’s zero chance of winning. There’s, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen young students win scholarships pretty frequently. So it’s, it’s not impossible.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:17
Well, I mean, if you aspire to someday play on the varsity football team, or be the drum major for the band. You don’t start on varsity,

Dave Peterson 9:28
exactly. Yeah, yep. And you know, for some of those things, you probably played, I don’t know what they call it anymore, Pop Warner Football, or, you know, little kid football, and worked your way up. And so you can do that with scholarships too. But every I think I’m sure there are exceptions, but almost every varsity football player started on the freshman team or started as a freshman, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:49
I do have a friend that paid played for the Cincinnati Bengals that did not start football. Oh, okay, junior high school. Okay. Then, surprisingly, got. College scholarship. So

Dave Peterson 10:01
that’s our exception, yeah? Well, and as I was saying, that should be

Lisa Marker-Robbins 10:06
a good point. Like, yeah. Exactly like, yeah. So if you are listening to this and you have a senior and you’re like, Oh, well, Dave said we should start practicing freshman year, it’s too late. Yes, also not too late. Maybe you’re the Michael Jordan of scholarships.

Dave Peterson 10:17
You could be. And especially if you’re hearing this when it’s coming out in September, it is very early for any student you know, in the norm, in the 90% of students who even bother applying for scholarships, most of them do start senior year. So it’s certainly not too late. Yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 10:34
okay, so we’re going to talk through the timeline. Yep, we’re going to start with freshmen. So what can fresh? Are you putting freshmen and sophomores together or just fresh?

Dave Peterson 10:45
I would Yes, I might have one little, little caveat additional for for sophomores, but for the most part, freshmen and sophomores are going to look very similar. So the first thing, really, in my opinion, is to incorporate scholarships into your family culture. So I’m not expecting a freshman or a sophomore to apply to 100 scholarships their freshman or sophomore year, 12345, would be fantastic, but you just want to make it part of what your family does, just like they do homework or just like they’re doing chores, just like they’re brushing their teeth. We as a family also apply for scholarships, and this sets the foundation that it’s an expectation the student gets that practice that we talked about, so that by junior and particularly senior year, they really know what they’re doing, and in fact, they may have already written some essays that they can reuse senior year.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 11:38
I Okay, so here’s a question. If you say, like, we’re just going to make it part of our family culture, it’s, I do the same thing with you. Need to have a college bound conversation for those I won’t even, I should probably change the name of it, because I’m really, like, getting away from the college bound like, yeah, it’s just a future planning right conversation every single week. But I also say, when you’re a freshman, like, that feels too heavy, I think, for kids. So like, you know, once a month we sit down and we talk about future planning related things. So you just said, like, if you’re a freshman and you want to start to begin to make a cultural shift in your family about this is something we do as a family. It’s part of our identity. Yep, and it’s maybe five or as you were saying that I’m like, Oh, they could do like one every other month, right? Sophomore year, maybe it’s one every month. But here’s what went through my mind when you said that. Well, how many do you suggest that seniors apply for? Are you because you just said, I’m not saying do 100 Yeah.

Dave Peterson 12:39
Yep. Is it awesome? So well, I sometimes will throw that out as a target. Even my own son did not hit 100 scholarships by the time he graduated high school. I think expectations, Yes, yep. I think that is a nice goal. It’s a very lofty goal, one that very few students will hit. And I really, I generally don’t say that too often, because it’ll scare it’ll definitely scare the student, and usually it will scare the parent too. So the best advice is, apply for as many as you can, yeah, while still juggling everything else. Well, that

Lisa Marker-Robbins 13:12
aspirational number probably feels less daunting if you’ve started as you’re suggesting, absolutely part of our family culture. We’re going to do one a month or one every other month.

Dave Peterson 13:23
Yep, yeah, 100% and it just because it’s part of your culture, if you to hit 100 it’s really like you said, if you did one a month, you’ll hit that by the end of senior year, absolutely, yeah. And senior year, you should do more than one a month. I do want to say that, yeah, yeah, because that’s when, that’s when the bulk of your opportunity exists. Maybe it’s at least one a week. Yeah, that would, that would be a great target. That might be tough, yeah, depending on the student, but yeah, yeah.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 13:54
Okay. Other advice for freshmen and maybe sophomores, or how do you differentiate those two groups?

Dave Peterson 14:01
Yeah. Well, I think the other piece, and this is also helpful for what you do with helping students figure out their future plans, and it’s also helpful academically, and that is, take a rigorous course load, extracurricular wise, get involved in lots of different things. Basically, you want to take this funnel approach, where freshman year, you want to try all the things, and then you want to start to narrow it down, and you want to have less breadth and more depth, because that personal narrative that you’re eventually working towards when senior year rolls around and you’re doing the bulk of your scholarships is going to be what is my future about, and What did I do in the past that shows I really have that genuine interest and ability to achieve that future thing. And that really starts, I think, in ninth grade, by trying lots of different things and seeing seeing what the students interests are, what their abilities are, and what their passions are.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 14:56
Yeah, so far this year, our most part. Popular. This is not going to surprise you. I could make it a quiz for you, but we won’t waste Okay, good. I think you would probably get it right. But our most popular podcast episode so far this year is episode 169 so flourish, coachingco.com forward slash. 169 is with Rick Clark, who’s at Georgia Tech for years and years and years, decades. He was the director of admissions. Now he’s about accessibility and enrollment at the university, he’s taken on a new role. But Georgia Tech, except for computer science, they do not admit students directly to major, yet their supplemental college essay that every student has to write is, why are you choosing the major that you’re applying to? Like, why do you why is Georgia Tech the place for you to go study that major? And there’s really a hidden impact of that. And Rick talks about how they’re going to evaluate said yet another acronym to the college bound journey. FTM, fit to major, how they’re going to assess fit to major, even at universities that don’t admit directly to majors that they have to. He explains why they have to and what gets evaluated. Extracurriculars and the courses that you take are part of that evaluation of fit to major. And I would argue we could come up with a new acronym, FTS, but just I

Dave Peterson 16:22
like it. I like it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that that really is true. You know, I’m in a lot of parent Facebook groups, and people will often say, what are some good scholarships my kid could should apply for? It’s like, I don’t know. I’m gonna I’m a scholarship expert, and I don’t know, because I don’t know, I don’t know your kid, what are they good at? What are they interested in? What’s their future major? That is how you know which scholarships to apply for, not which are good ones,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 16:47
right? I love that. That’s a Yeah, and I can see why you would get that answer. You know, one of the things I see with families, and I think it goes with like, all educational pathways of future planning, is I even see people go like, I just, I want an assessment that’s so good, it tells my kid what they should be, right? And I’m like, assessments have a place, but if you’re relying on an assessment, it’s not going to get you there. It’s about a process. It’s going to take time and intention and attention. And so I think that question that you get asked all the time gets to the heart of we wanted to be quick and easy. And the reality is, the things that are valuable, yeah, aren’t

Dave Peterson 17:30
exactly, Yep, yeah, absolutely. And you know, like I said earlier in the conversation about the parents who are involved and the ones who maybe are getting a little disheartened that their students not winning scholarships. It’s a process, I’m sure, just like there Michael Jordan did not play basketball as a freshman in high school. There are students who win the first scholarship they apply for, but they are exceedingly rare. You are going to lose more scholarships than you win. 20% is a great win rate, so keep that in mind, and that that 20% win rate doesn’t mean that if you apply for for 10 scholarships, you’re you’re going to win two, you’re probably not going to start to get to that 20% until you, you know, hit a critical mass. Yeah. So that was another thing that I noticed in the stats with my last cohort, my last senior year cohort, is that it wasn’t just the students who applied for more, one more the students who applied for more, one at a higher rate than students who applied for

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:28
less. Okay, great insight. Well, I think it’s, it’s all about managing expectations, yeah, so and that helps us relieve that we’re not failing when we don’t get those quick, quick, quick wins. Yep, I just saw recently that on average it is taking over five it’s like five point whatever months for a 22 to 24 year old who’s just graduated college to land their first job. Okay? And I see a lot of kids begin to have feelings friction in their body when they’re even like two, two and a half, three months in that, oh my gosh, I don’t have a job. Well, no, it doesn’t work that way. Yep, right now. So you did surprise me a little bit with this freshman sophomore advice, anything? Because I think most people you know, they they’re starting junior year, and junior year always feels like the big, heavy year, like, oh my gosh, we have so much to do, and this is the year that counts, and all the things, is it the year that counts? Or am I, you know, help me think about this

Dave Peterson 19:36
correctly. I think from a scholarship perspective, all of high school really counts, because they’re looking at a much bigger picture. I think one of the big misconceptions, and we’re particularly talking about outside scholarships when I say this, but even merit aid, to some degree, scholarships want to be a part of the student’s future story. It’s not an award for past achievement, and that is why. I if you go through some of the Facebook groups I’m in, you’ll see parents who have not worked with me or with anybody else. My kid applied for 50 scholarships and didn’t win anything. And I will sometimes as as a courtesy. Now, please don’t inundate me with these requests, but I will sometimes just say, hey, send me their essay and I’ll give you a quick, quick review. And inevitably, it’s just a a resume and essay form. I did x, I did y, I did Z. There’s not even a mention of their future college major or career. And I go back and tell them, I hate to tell you, but this is why you spun your wheels without success, is that you weren’t giving the scholarships what they want. They want to literally, if you look at some of the big scholarship providers. They’re still promoting their winners from 1020, years ago, because it’s a marketing thing. That’s why these companies offer these scholarships. It’s a marketing thing. And they want to say scholarship 100% yes, yes, yes. And we, Coca Cola, helped Billy do this great thing, because we gave him the money. Or, you know, we the VFW, you know, worked with Sally, and now look at what she’s doing. So it really is scholarships, again, most I’m mostly talking about outside, but I think it applies to merit. Aid to some degree, is really about helping that student achieve their future goals and plans.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:17
So any other tips on freshmen and sophomores before we move on to juniors.

Dave Peterson 21:23
Yep, very quickly. So one thing you can do at any point in the process, regardless of where you are, is set up profiles on the major scholarship database sites, and I have a list of those. And in fact, I’m looking at my notes here, and I’m essentially giving my notes away to your listeners. Today they will be able to link to a document where I show the sites that I recommend students set up their profiles and why I recommend them. Now, setting up the profile of step a step b is about every six months or when a student has a major milestone. Update those profiles so that those sites are matching students with the right scholarships. They’re not perfect. They do match more than maybe they should, but you can, we you can weed through a short list much easier than every scholarship on these sites, right? So, so let them do a bit of the heavy lifting, set up profiles and and then see what the scholarships are you get matched with.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 22:23
And we should add, set up a separate email that you’re going to use. Yes, thank you. Scholarship searches, because you do, do not want it to clog up your regular inbox. You know, I like that advice about like, every time you hit a major milestone or or whatever, you know, update it. I teach the same thing when I used to do college counseling, but even now, with I only do career advising, career development, I say, like every semester, you said, get it. Make this part of your family culture. Make also part of your family’s culture. That whether it’s the end of every grading period. That’s a good benchmark because it’s easy to remember, yep, get in there. Update your extracurricular list, update your resume, update your LinkedIn profile, update your scholarship profile, absolutely. That would be a good little end of the grading period checklist, and it should be happening all the time throughout high

Dave Peterson 23:22
school. Yes, yes, excuse me. The other reason for that is that students and even parents often forget what their kids accomplished in ninth or 10th grade. And there can be some really important things that they do that if you’re not writing it down, writing it down digitally, you might forget. And so if nothing else, it’s gonna, it’s gonna help with that. Yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 23:44
that’s great. Okay, junior year, that all important. Big junior year.

Dave Peterson 23:49
All important, junior year. So continue doing everything we said that you know you would do as a freshman and a sophomore. Continue that, that kind of funnel approach, where you’re maybe even unjoining a club that’s no longer relevant, or whatever. From a strictly scholarship perspective, though, this is a bigger year than people realize. Everybody knows that senior year is kind of the peak of the mountain, but junior year is a great time if you’re just getting started. For a few reasons. Again, that practice by now, hopefully that student can really start refining their personal narrative. I would not expect a student who started working on scholarships and had personal narrative essays as a ninth grader to use that same essay in 11th and 12th grade. It’s going to be refined Well, we

Lisa Marker-Robbins 24:35
hope that they’re a different person. We do Yeah. As a parent, I hope Yeah, yeah, 100% Yep.

Dave Peterson 24:43
But there are actually some really big opportunities open to juniors that are not open during senior year. So in the fall of junior year is something called the Coolidge scholarship. This is a full ride four year scholarship. So. Um, is it easy to win? No, you shouldn’t expect a full ride to be easy. But believe it or not, there’s not even a GPA requirement to enter it, and one of the best things students can do to prepare for it is to learn about President Calvin Coolidge, sitting right here. Have this book because I will be with my current Junior cohort doing a book club to help prepare them for that scholarship.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 25:27
Oh, so you use that, that book.

Dave Peterson 25:31
I choose this book for a particular reason, because she is the president of the Coolidge Foundation, which is managing the scholarship. Talk about scholarship, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So if you’d like to go through that book club with me, reach out. But certainly parents could, could do that on their own. It’s a great that’s

Lisa Marker-Robbins 25:53
something that you do with the families that are in scholarship. GPS, your course,

Dave Peterson 25:58
not in my course, but my more one on one coaching, yeah, so my scholarship navigator and scholarship coaching programs,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 26:04
okay, the one on one Gotcha? Okay, so

Dave Peterson 26:08
that’s a big one. Opens up sometime in the fall of junior year, and then in the spring of junior year is a scholarship called the Brian Cameron Foundation Scholarship. This is not full ride, but it’s full tuition at any college in the country. So whether that’s Harvard or, you know, it

Lisa Marker-Robbins 26:24
doesn’t matter if the college is, you know, $70,000 tuition, yep, or if it’s

Dave Peterson 26:33
30, yes, exactly, wow, yep, they will send to any accredited college in the I could really change your college list. Yes, absolutely, and students will find out if they’ve won the Brian Cameron scholarship before they have to make that that decision for college. So yes, they absolutely. If they have applied, probably by about the time they’re applying for college, they will know whether they have at least made it to the next round. And certainly, if you’ve made it to that next round, maybe you’re going to apply to a few other schools that you might not now that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to get that scholarship, but how many do they award? It varies. I think it’s 15 to 20 per year, which is not, again, not a lot. But get this, they only accept 3000 applications. So this is why that one you need to get in early. So that’s a first serve. It’s a first come, first serve. And in fact, this year they closed. I don’t have it in front of me, but they closed before the end of last school year. That’s how quickly, you know, they hit that 3000

Lisa Marker-Robbins 27:40
are there. I’ve never heard of that before. As far as now, I will say this University of Arkansas does that with college majors. They have certain majors that, once they hit a point, they are closed to out of state applicants, but still open that in state applicants, okay, which is fascinating. It’s an unusual way of doing it. I think that seems unusual. Are there many other scholarships that have that same approach of like, we’ll only take the first however many.

Dave Peterson 28:10
There are several. A big one in senior year is the Burger King scholarship. Far too many people take themselves out of the running for that scholarship when they shouldn’t, because they look at it the judging rubric, and the third says we’re going to award this based on financial need. And so people think, Oh, we make too much money. They don’t define what financial need is. But here’s the real reason is that they award over 4000 scholarships. So if you’ve run those numbers, 4000 out of 50,000 works out to a one in 12 shot of winning that scholarship. Thanks for math. Yeah, it’s not exact. It’s pretty close. But even better, those scholarships now not their top, top $50,000 prize, but lower dollar amounts still, still nothing to sneeze at, are awarded based on geography and very micro geography, basically aligning to your closest Burger King. I don’t know for sure that’s how you do it, but it appears that way. So your financial situation probably looks like your neighbor’s financial situation for most of us. Right, right? So even if you are middle or upper middle class, probably everybody else that would be in whatever that little area they’re looking at is very similar to you, yeah, so don’t yourself out, yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:30
yeah. I love, I mean, I’m getting more from this, this episode that we’ve done together, more nuances about different scholarships, just because it’s more fitting with the topic this time, right? Yeah, but it’s making me think, I mean, it says nuanced as what we’re doing with college majors and careers. I mean, yeah, yeah, lots of nuances. Okay, any other tips for successful junior year scholarships?

Dave Peterson 29:56
Well, just one more thing about that, Brian Cameron scholarship. This is really. First big scholarship where the student’s personal narrative is critical. The essays that they have to write for that scholarship are all about the student’s personal narrative. Now, do they look at GPA and things like that? Of course they do, but there’s multiple essays in that, and they’re almost all about personal narrative. That’s

Lisa Marker-Robbins 30:21
when we’re like, go back to Episode 161 all we talked about was personal narrative as it relates to both the work that I do and the work that you do is so crucial.

Dave Peterson 30:33
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. That one, we said before the Coolidge scholarship also opened to juniors. That one, they do ask some things about the student, but knowledge of Calvin Coolidge is the differentiator.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 30:45
Yeah, interesting. Okay, fascinating. Okay, so bring us into senior year as we come into the finish line.

Dave Peterson 30:51
So senior year is the big year. I think one mistake that I see far too many people making is that they don’t apply for these, quote, unwinnable big scholarships, if you look at senior year in most places. Now, certainly everybody check your your locality, but I’ve, I’ve never seen an exception is national scholarships are all well. National scholarships are all the time, but local scholarships are usually only in the spring of senior year. There’s a couple reasons to apply for these scholarships. These these national scholarships in the fall. One, again, is practice. You know, if this is where you’re starting, then this is where you have to get that practice in. And I looked again with my my last senior year cohort, the students who applied for some of these, these big senior year scholarships, which are, for the most part, open in the fall and into winter. Even if they didn’t win any of those, they still won their local scholarships at a higher rate. So it’s it’s really about that practice and refining those essays and learning the process. So just like I was saying, Don’t count yourself out of that Burger King scholarship because of the financial need component. There’s a lot of those. The Elks most valuable student is a huge one they award, I think it’s 200 prizes at the national level, but they also award prizes at the local and state level. So yes, they do look at financial need, but another big one that, if for no other reason, I recommend students apply for it, because the form that they use is very similar to the forms that lots of other scholarships are going to use. So if they’ll just learn the process, they’ll learn, oh, I really need to have my my resume in front of me as I fill out these forms, things

Lisa Marker-Robbins 32:34
like that, so you better have your resume finished.

Dave Peterson 32:38
Well, yes, and that is one of the things I recommend is students do need a resume. Some scholarships actually requirement. It’s part of the submission process, right? But it’s important. As you’re asking teachers for letters of recommendation for scholarships, give them your resume. It helps, helps the teachers.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 32:52
We actually have an entire module in the course. So not only do we do LinkedIn, but then after you’ve put it’s easier to actually put your LinkedIn profile together first and then translate that into a resume, then vice versa. But we have a resume template that we use it. Here’s the thing, people are often surprised, like there are paid high school internships available? Yes, yeah, I don’t know of any of them that you can apply to without having a resume or and or a LinkedIn profile,

Dave Peterson 33:26
yeah, yep. So yeah, very important. And again, if nothing else, it’s going to jog your memory of, oh yes, that I do have that in my my background that I can talk about. Yeah.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 33:36
Well, Dave, this has been fantastic. Anything that we missed before we bring it into home plate here.

Dave Peterson 33:42
I guess one other thing about seniors, I said that for the most part, anywhere I’ve seen local scholarships are in the spring, but check with your school counselor, ask if they are keeping a list or a database of those local scholarships. Just because I’ve never seen fall local scholarships doesn’t mean they’re they’re not out there. So Right? You know, everybody’s situation is going to be unique. So, you know,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:04
working, I would say employer scholarships too, right?

Dave Peterson 34:07
Yes, yes. And if your parents are a member of a union or professional organization, those are great avenues. One of my students last year won a scholarship from his father’s union. And we’ll say it was he. He was eligible because the father was in the Union, but he won because of his personal narrative.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:28
Yeah, that’s amazing. And do those tend to be more, those employer or organizational scholarships? Do they tend to be more fall or spring, or do you not know? Are they just kind of spread out? Um,

Dave Peterson 34:41
I would say they’re probably a little bit heavier in the spring.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:46
Lawyers, but yeah, yep, yeah, yeah, this is fantastic. Okay, so we’re gonna put that kind of like your timeline with the resources at flourish, coachingco.com four. Slash scholarship. And if this has you going like, this sounds fantastic. Dave’s super knowledgeable, and we need support, because it also doesn’t sound like a piece of cake, then you can learn more about how Dave works with families at flourish coachingco.com, forward slash scholarship, GPS, because you help people GPS at navigate, that’s right. Dave, thanks. I know this is not going to be our last time together, and I really appreciate you coming back to the show.

Dave Peterson 35:35
Thanks, Lisa for having me back. This was a lot of fun. Thanks,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 35:38
Dave, you if you want to put what you learned today into action, head to flourish, coachingco.com forward slash scholarship to download the detailed scholarship timeline we talked about, organized by grade level so you know exactly what to focus on each year, and if your family wants expert support every step of the way, check out Dave’s course at flourish coaching co.com forward slash scholarship. GPS, we’re gonna put both of these in the show notes. It’s a powerful resource to help your student build their personal narrative, stay on track and win real money for college. Thanks for listening, and as always, keep taking those small steps that lead to big clarity. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai