No one wants to shoulder the whole financial burden of college–definitely not the parents, although they’d willingly do it for the sake of their soon-to-be college freshman. Loans are a pain in the butt, to be honest; and you can only get so many grants in. The key is this: scholarships.
Make no mistake, your child has talents–maybe even some gifts you don’t know he or she has. Your job as a parent is to discover what those gifts are. Because amazingly enough, in the field of education, there are literally dozens of different scholarships available–an art scholarship, basketball scholarship, math scholarship, writing scholarship, poetry scholarship, law scholarship.
The only thing that stops a kid from bothering with a scholarship is the idea that they won’t get the award. Too much competition. Too much free money. They don’t think they’d get picked, so why bother? Well, why not? What would it hurt? As a parent, you have to encourage your teen to let go of the personal feeling behind a competition toward a scholarship and just simply try it out. If you, as a parent, has done the job of nurturing every possible talent in your teen, you can rest assured that he or she would do the very best job he or she could possibly do. And that’s the best chance ever.
No joke–a scholarship provides for a whole college education. That’s pretty enticing. Forget the grants and loans. This is the whole enchilada! That leaves a rather easy breezy time for your future college student to earn a bit of money on a part-time job or something like that without worrying about mommy and daddy having to pay this loan or that loan or whatnot. Everything’s paid for.
Just remind your teen of that, and writing a simple essay for a scholarship should be a no-brainer.