Persistence can pay off with real money and big-time scholarships!
A homeschooler was kind enough to share her success on my Facebook page. Her story is more like two successes, combined into one magnificent story.
In the first half of the story, she tells us about her child, struggling to earn college scholarships based on her SAT score.
My daughter was 10 points away from the number she needed for $2000 more in scholarships per year! I called the school and proclaimed that my daughter is NOT a number and that she was always just a poor test taker. It didn’t matter. She took the SAT 3 times and the ACT, missing the number by 0.2 points in the conversion to SAT!!! She eventually got the number and the extra scholarship.
This young girl took the SAT again and it was worth $2,000 per year. Let’s do the math … that’s $8,000 for taking a test! Because she took the test just one more time and because she studied, and tried to increase her score, it translated into big bucks.
How many hours did this teenager study in order to earn her portion, the $8,000? If she worked a LOT, perhaps she studied for 40 hours total. It is unusual to study that much, but it’s possible. If she had studied that many hours, this young teenager would have been earning $200 per hour to study for the SAT! Is that worth it? Absolutely! In a heart beat! Do you know many teenagers that make $200 per hour? I don’t!
In the second half of this story, this homeschool mom talks about how she was desperate and struggling to afford college for her children.
I also just wrote the college (private college) and asked if there were anymore scholarships available because I had 2 kids in college. They awarded her $2000 more per year!!! A letter worth $8000! Always ask!!!
This mom wrote a letter to ask for more scholarships. It was worth $2,000 per year. Quickly doing the math again, that’s $8,000! Again, because Mom took the time to express her concerns.
Let’s do a quick review of the math:
One letter = $8000.
One morning = $8,000.
Total = $16,000
These are real dollars! How many hours would you need to work to earn $16,000?
Please note: This post was originally published in October 2012 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
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How many hours would I have to work to earn that kind of money? A lot more hours than I work now, LOL. My younger child was recently shocked to learn that no one pays me to home school. Oh that would be sooooooooo nice!!!
Wouldn’t it be nice!? Oh! And paid vacations and in-service days too, please! LOL
Robin
I wrote a letter to a highly regarded music school in our area that my son was very interested in attending, and they bumped his scholarship up $3000/year ($12,000/4 years). That is a tremendous amount of money, but we couldn’t justify the adjusted $10,000/year ($40,000 for four years) scholarship when we would have to pay nearly $100,000 out of pocket for my son to commute to school! He did end up getting a full tuition scholarship to a local state university after one year in their honors program. Definitely, without a doubt, not first choice, but he can save the money we would have spent on college as he wants to attend grad school.
Moral of story: it can definitely pay to speak up! It’s worth a try!
Thank you, Ann!
Blessings,
Lee