What is the best description of how a scholarship works?
The best definition of how a scholarship works is that it is a specific award made to students in exchange for their commitment to participate in a specific program. In exchange, the student agrees to meet certain criteria, typically academic, to attain the award. The criteria may be academic, as in the form of high grades.
But some are non-academic in nature. For instance, there are Harvard University scholarships awarded to undergraduate students in return for their commitment to participate in the university’s Opium Program, in which they submit essays and perform community service. In general, however, scholarships are given to people who demonstrate particular levels of ambition and initiative. And this is what makes them unique. No other type of award is so open-ended in the sense that you can get it without undertaking extraordinary effort on your part. That’s why grants and scholarships are often compared to each other, since both are forms of awards that require no particular reciprocity.
But there’s more than that. Grants, like scholarships, are only given to people who demonstrate the requisite conditions. They’re available to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status or the presence or absence of any other condition that would normally disqualify a person from getting a federal financial aid. They’re also not limited to any specific type of student. This means that, if you can demonstrate the ability to perform the assigned activities in the specified manner, then you might very well qualify for a grant or scholarship.
Another difference is that grants, unlike scholarships, don’t have to be repaid. In addition, unlike loans, they don’t need to be refundable. The federal government considers these types of awards as financial aid, which automatically means that you don’t have to repay them after graduation. So that you can better understand how a scholarship or grant differs from a loan, it’s important to know what financial aid is, exactly.
Financial aid is basically any money, other than tuition, that you, the student or recipient, will have to pay back. In the case of federal grants and scholarships, the money awarded is considered “free money,” which means that you don’t have to repay it at any time. This, obviously, doesn’t mean that you can just spend the money on whatever you want; but the money is available to you for your personal use.
A lot of us doubt the eligibility of people who do not reside in the United States, or the relevance of educational goals to our lives. These two thoughts are deeply rooted in our nation’s history. Many of our past leaders, including some of our great presidents, used federal grants and scholarships to further educational goals. They didn’t just do it because they had the power – they did it because they wanted to do it. That, ultimately, is the most important question that we need to answer when thinking about whether or not scholarships and grants are relevant to our own personal and educational goals.
