How to Help Your Teen Organize Their College Scholarship Search

As a parent, the years leading up to your teen’s high school graduation are often ones full of emotional ups and downs, including being anxious about getting your child into a good college. You might not be sure how to assist your teen as they consider where to enroll after grade 12, and financial stresses about tuition might weigh on your mind. To help your son or daughter be in a better position to get a scholarship, which decreases the financial burden, show them valuable organization tips. Below are the top suggestions.

1. Help Them Organize Their Resources

A proper college scholarship search starts with a roundup of all the tools available. Those search tools include websites and other online (and offline) resources that will help you and your child track down the perfect scholarship.

Make a list of them because it’s all too easy to focus your search on only one website. As a parent, make sure your teen looks at the situation from all possible angles.

2. Encourage Them to Take the Lead

As difficult as it may be, it’s important that you instill in your child the knowledge that the higher education journey is theirs to navigate. While you are there for support and guidance, the scholarships and colleges they apply for need to be their choice.

Remember, these steps are some of your teen’s first ones in the grownup world, so you want to make sure they’re capable of standing on their own two feet. The independence you give them will help them become future leaders.

3. Get Them an Account at ASM Scholarships

ASMScholarships.com is an excellent resource for teens looking for a college football scholarship or another sport scholarship. This intuitive platform allows them to build an online CV where they can connect with coaches and teachers from all over the world.

These connections can be very useful. For example, your teen can ask these coaches and reputable figures in the sports community for recommendations to help them secure the desired scholarship

4. Keep in Mind All Deadlines

Let’s say you and your child have settled on seven scholarships. That’s great as it’s best to have multiple candidates. The chances are that each of these seven scholarships has a different deadline.

To help prevent your teen from missing one, encourage them to write down the admission due dates on paper or in an electronic calendar. It’s easy to get confused when handling so many things at once, and your teen might not have had as much responsibility before. Help them learn better organizational skills, starting now.

5. Gather Everything in Time

Just as different college scholarships have different deadlines, it’s also possible for them to have different requirements. Help your teen gather all required papers, as well as video footage if it is a sports scholarship. Some common admission requirements are:

* 1-2 letters of recommendation
* Resume
* Letter of intent (or statement of purpose, in some places)
* GMAT, GRE, or equivalent scores

Check with each college and each scholarship of interest, and make sure you gather all the necessary information in good time. If your teen plans on asking a teacher for a recommendation letter, make sure they do it early so that the teacher isn’t swamped by other requests and has ample time to do it.

Organizing Your Teen’s Future Years

Work with your teen to organize their college years, starting with the application process. A scholarship is a great way to reduce tuition costs and prepare your teen for a future sports career. Some of the other organization tasks to help them with is budgeting and moving to a new location.