As you most likely know by now, getting a master’s degree will definitely cost you quite a few thousand dollars. Sometimes, even though some people want to get this advanced degree, they are reluctant to start their journey because of financial difficulties.
One way to surpass this challenge is to get student loans. However, that is highly impractical due to the fact that you have to return the loan at some point in your life. Because of this, most students enroll in a degree with the hopes that they can finance at least a part of it through scholarships.
Scholarships are highly beneficial as they can enable you to go to grad school for free. Also, there are so many of them, but they are quite difficult to get. There are so many requirements to getting a scholarship for grad school, starting from a GPA cut-off, transcripts, essays, recommendations and on and on.
Due to all these stringent requirements, many students are discouraged and they give up and don’t even apply. But, did you know that there are some scholarships, which are easy to get? These “easy scholarships” have very few requirements and don’t need you to go above and beyond to send one simple application.
In this article, we will go through a few of such easy scholarships to apply for, as well as a few tips on what to look for when you apply.
What Are The Requirements Of Easy Scholarships?
Well the whole point of easy scholarships are that they are easy to apply for. This means that you don’t have to submit a mountain full of documents and write wonderfully crafted essays to be eligible to apply.
Most easy scholarships require you to sign up and state in a few sentences why you need or deserve to get this scholarship. Others will ask you to submit a 250 word essay, share company sponsored posts, or just plain register to enter the competitions.
What you should understand about these easy scholarships is that they might be easy to apply for, but they are definitely not easy to get. Due to the fact that they have so few requirements, almost anyone can apply and almost everyone does. This means you have thousands of competitors who are also hoping they will get this scholarship.
The point of easy scholarships is that selection is most often random. There will be no panel going through your application form, your essays, resume, or transcripts. No one will call you for an interview or ask you to go through a standardized test (hello GRE, GMAT, and TOEFL). Instead, it’ll be like a lottery.
By fulfilling the eligibility criteria and uploading or answering whatever question the scholarship sponsors have devised, you enter into a competition, where one or only a few people will get selected. If you get the scholarship, it means you got it out of pure luck and not because your qualifications were taken into consideration.
Nevertheless, this makes it so much easier to get some basically free money. With easy scholarships, you don’t have to justify your prior grades, or explain in detail your work experience. You won’t even have to list all the extracurricular activities you have done since kindergarten. You will just answer their questions and it will be an easy ride.
Due to the nature of easy scholarships, most of them will have smaller values. You might once in a while see an easy scholarship for $10,000 or $20,000, but most of them will range from $500 to around $3,000.
Just because they have small amounts though, doesn’t mean that they’re not worth applying for. You should definitely try your luck and apply to one, since you never know when you might actually get it.
Avoid scam
A few things you should be wary about though is that there are some scams when it comes to such scholarships. Many websites will claim to award easy scholarships, but will instead ask for personal information such as social security number or your credit card number. Some might even ask you to donate money. Do not fall for these! They are scamming websites that try to trick hard working students who need scholarships into giving away information or funding them. So before you apply for easy scholarships, make sure they are real and are not trying to trick you.
Easy Scholarships to Apply For
So after telling you what easy scholarships are and their requirements, here is a list of 8 easy scholarships you can apply to.
Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway
Dr. Pepper, the famous brand in the U.S is committed to giving students more opportunities to finance their education. They have three awards of $2,500, $20,000, and $100,000 to three lucky people.
All you have to do is have social media accounts and answer the question “Tell us how you’ll change the world in 350 characters or less.” Then you’ll just have to get more votes from your friends and voila, seems like a pretty easy thing. All students are eligible to apply, so you’ll have a ton of competition, but you never know when your luck might pop out.
For more information on this scholarship, visit the Dr. Pepper official rules.
Ayn Rand – The Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest
Ayn Rand is a famous novelist who has written “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” amongst other books. Each year, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) seeks to help students become more educated. They award scholarships of different amounts, starting from $100 to $20,000. The requirement is that you only have to submit an essay of around 800 or more words through their website. Check out their Essay Contests webpage for more information.
Scholarship Points
Scholarship Points gives away a huge number of scholarships that are so easy to apply for. There is no eligibility criteria whatsoever, except that you have to register with their website. Then you can see all the available scholarships and just click “Enter drawing” and you’ll have applied. Scholarships vary in amounts, but can go up to $10,000. Go to Scholarship Points website to find out more.
Create a Greeting Card Scholarship Contest
The Gallery Collection has a great way to award scholarship money to creative people. They organize an annual Create A Greeting Card Contest, where you probably guessed it, you have to design a greeting card. You can enter simply by filling in their application form and uploading a jpeg file of your designed card.
The most incredible fact is that the winner gets $10,000 to finance their tuition and even the university you are enrolled in gets $1,000. So hurry up and apply in their official Gallery Collection website.
Course Hero Scholarships
Course Hero is a website full of resources for students such as flash cards and tutoring. They also help students out to finance their education. Each month, they have different scholarships which are open for a specific period of time. All you have to do is follow these steps:
- Register on the Course Hero website
- Answer a short 150-word question
- Give advice on a course you have taken before
- Upload 8 study documents
- Share all of it on social media
Since this is aimed for students, it should be pretty easy to come up with advice on classes and have available course study guides to share with others. So go ahead and check out what scholarships are available here.
VIP Voice Scholarship
If you have a university you want to go to, but you can’t really afford all of it, VIP Voice will help you. They have created a scholarship which awards around $5,000 to students. All you have to do is register with their website and tell them about the university you want to go to. If you are chosen from the lottery, the money you get will go towards the university you chose. Anyone can apply, starting from high school students to graduate students, so competition is pretty high.
GraduatePrograms.com Graduate School Scholarship
GraduatePrograms.com is a resource based website on graduate school. They also sponsor a $2,500 scholarship award to students currently enrolled in graduate programs or alumni who have graduated from one. The money goes to pay your current tuition fees or your student loans.
All you have to do is state the university you are in or have graduated from and rate it on the criteria provided. It’s pretty easy, and what’s even better is that you get to enter as many times as you wish, which increases your chances of winning.
Niche “No Essay” Scholarship
The “No Essay” scholarship, is exactly what its name suggests. It doesn’t require you to write an essay. You just have to register to the sponsor’s website, Niche, enter some of your information such as your name, email address, and birthday and you enter the lottery. The scholarship is open each month and the awards are up to $2,000. So you have the chance to apply each month and maybe in one of those 12 application, you will be lucky enough to win!
So here they are, 8 easy scholarships you can apply to without making a fuss about documents and transcripts. Another great website you can visit for more scholarship opportunities, which might not necessarily be easy to apply for is Scholarships.com. You can apply to each one of the easy scholarships and even try some of the more difficult ones so you might get part or hopefully all of your tuition funded for you.