I am the valedictorian of my school, but I haven't received any scholarships, whats wrong? What should I do?

Question

I've applied to like a million scholarship, local and national and I haven't heard anything back on any one. I have a 4.34 GPA a 24 on the act test and a 1480 on the SAT, I'm very invovled in school. HOSA, NHS, Book club...ect. WHATS GOING ON? I only have the money from FAFSA which my efc was zero and i received $20,000. Does people not like me or something? Why do you guys think I haven't received any awards? I see alot of people at my school getting stuff back and I'm getting worried. I'm going to a private university, how am I going to pay????

Answer 1

A lot of scholarships are "gpa and ACT, SAT blind".  Many scholarships will not even look at your ACT and SAT, and will probably pay little attention to your GPA.  Most scholarships focus on "you" and your extracuriculars.  You have to have good extracuriculars to get them.  NHS is not considered at E.C. as well as most honors society, unless you are very active with them and you volunteer with them.  If you are part of several clubs/organizations, that is not always good either, scholarships like you to focus on a theme (animals, homeless, children, education) and they want you to volunteer with this theme as well as having leadership positions with the theme.  If you are part of a whole bunch of different organizations that don't have anything in common it seems like you are just trying to pad your profile and that you are really not passionate about an issue in society.  This might be the reason why you are not getting scholarships.

Keep trying though, if you keep applying your bound to get one sooner or later.  :)