When it comes to easy financial aid options, you can't get much easier than no essay scholarships. As the name implies, these scholarships require no essay whatsoever. All you have to do is fill out some basic information about yourself and your school, and you could win a decent chunk of change to pay for your degree. Could you pay for the whole thing with no essay scholarships? Eh, that's iffy. Let's do some calculating to figure that out…
The average no essay scholarship is anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the institution issuing it. The higher value scholarships obviously have more competition, so you are less likely to win those than you are the $1,000 scholarships. A basic public school undergraduate degree is going to cost about $20,000 a year, which means you'll need a minimum of $80,000 in no essay scholarships to pay for your education completely. Unless you are just the luckiest person in the entire world, that's not going to happen.
Most no essay scholarships are issued by drawing, which means that a random person wins every time. Once you win one, you can't win the same one again. Thus you would literally have to win every single no essay scholarship in the world to be able to pay for your education. I'm all for being optimistic, but you probably shouldn't get your hopes up. You're just going to need other scholarships to cover the cost of your degree.
There is nothing wrong with applying to no essay scholarships because they are so quick. You could apply for 10 of them in a single hour, and you may have a decent shot at winning at least one of them. Don't give up on them entirely. Just don't get your hopes up about what they can do for you. They may not be as profitable as you want them to be.
Ideally, you need to apply to all kinds of scholarships – no essay, merit, need based, minority…whatever you qualify for. The more you can apply to, the better your chances are of paying for college. Do all of this at once, and you won't have to admit to winning any scholarships at this time. If five places accept you because of that, so be it. That's just more money to help you pay for school.
Think about all of this before taking the easy way out. Only use no essay scholarships as a backup for the other financial aid that you already have in line. Hopefully you'll be able to find a setup that works for you.
About the Author
Jenny Peterson is a writer for Hot-Scholarships.com. She has actually applied to almost every no essay scholarship online, and she has yet to win one. That just foes to show how reliable these things really are 😉
