How I Made $34,900 in Scholarships and Graduated University Debt-Free

Equivalent to a year of FT work at min. wage w/o taxes

Note: This story begins with the literal story of how it happened. If you are looking for recommendations to maximize your own scholarship potential, scroll along until you see the next major bolded headline.

How it happened:

High school was a bit of a funny story. Unlike most of my peers, I didn’t have a part-time job or any demanding extracurriculars. Sure, I played varsity soccer — if you can call sitting on the bench for a season “playing.”

Most of my high school nights were spent playing video games. Sometimes I wrote an essay at five a.m., but only if it was due the next day. Or if I had an exam coming up, I might study for an hour before going to bed. Because I wasn’t working, and I didn’t have any responsibilities or social life, I had no excuses to not get good grades. So I got good grades.

I ended up graduating with an 89.57% average. Luckily for me, one of the universities I applied to offered a full year of free tuition to applicants with an average of 90% or higher. 89.57 rounds up to 90. If my average had been less than 89.50%, I wouldn’t have been eligible for the full-tuition scholarship. So, I earned my first $6,200 scholarship by a margin of 0.08%. Importantly, recipients of the scholarship can receive full tuition coverage throughout all of their years at university, if they can keep up their 90% average. But who actually maintains a 90% average in university?

[P.S.] I knew it was going to be a close call for that scholarship, and at the end of the school year my friends encouraged me to talk to a few teachers and convince them to bump my grades up by a few percentage points. Well, rest assured, I didn’t do that (even though it would have been the smart thing to do). All my scholarships are certified 100% organic.

My 89.57 average also earned me the highest male graduating average for my year. Yes, I know. That is a very low average to be the highest of all the guys who were graduating. But, I went to school in a small town, and most of the guys I knew were country kids aspiring to be farmers or tradespeople. What’s the point of studying for a biology test if you’re going to be a plumber?

The academic competition was much more fierce in the opposite sex, though. If I was a girl going to the exact same high school, my graduating average wouldn’t have come even close to the highest. My guess is that most of the girls set their sights on postsecondary after realizing they weren’t interested in becoming plumbers— but that’s just my guess.

Anyway, because I had the highest average, I received a fairly substantial scholarship at my graduation. I also received a handful of other awards and grants, some of which I applied for (like a Royal Canadian Legion scholarship for being the grandson of a veteran. I had to write an essay and application to be considered for that one), and some of which automatically considered me (like the highest male average award, and an award for creative writing). I don’t remember exactly which awards I received that night, but there were about eight of them, and together they totalled approximately $10,000.

So, graduating high school, I had earned ~$16,200, most of it due to luck and my total lack of a social life in high school.

In university, I received a $500 humanities award, simply for being a major in a humanities program. Great. I also received a $1000 bursary for financial need. Nice.

After my first year of uni, I had somehow managed to earn a 91.5% average. So, I renewed my ~$6,200 scholarship. I also earned another full-tuition scholarship because of my grades, but you can’t earn two full-tuition scholarships in one year, so they refunded the renewable scholarship for the year, and tacked on an additional $1500 or so instead. I also earned two other awards worth about $1000. I know, tricky accounting. The big thing is that, after the first year, I had earned an extra $10,200. In total, as I was moving into my second year, I had earned a total of $26,400 throughout my academic career.

In second year, my grades dropped to an 84.8% average. So my tuition scholarship renewed to a lesser amount, but still a better amount than what I would have earned if they rounded down. Once again, I was fortunate to have rounding principles in my favour, and earned a scholarship of $3,000 by a margin of 0.9%. Lucky guy, huh?

In third (83.5%) and fourth (83.6%) years I received lesser scholarships of $2,500. In total, the remaining three years of university raked in $8,000, plus an extra $500 for an award I received in fourth year. So, all told, I earned $34,900 from scholarships earned in high school and university.

I didn’t pay for my schooling with scholarships exclusively, though. If you fancy yourself somewhat of an accountant, you can figure my expenses offset these earnings. ~$6,400 tuition x 4 years = $25,600. Plus the auxiliary fees which I paid in my first year ($1,700).

Rent also cost me $6,000 a year, so add another $24,000 too, and when you combine rent with yearly food expenses ($2,400) and phone bills ($600), the basic annual living costs jump to $9,000. Tack that on to the price of tuition for a godforsaken humanities degree, and the total runs to $61,600 for my English degree. Of course, this basic amount doesn’t account for health/dental care (because who needs teeth?), entertainment (because who needs fun?), books (bloody expensive), or additional expenses like paying for my laptop, phone, or the printing of my godforsaken essays.

My scholarships only covered ~$35,000 of that total cost. The rest I received from OSAP and working full-time during my summer breaks and part-time during the school year, along with gifts from family.

For example, my father told me years ago that as much money as I saved by the time I started university, he would match. So, from the time I was about 10, I would ask for cash instead of birthday and Christmas presents, and along with any money I earned through the year, at least half would go into a savings account. The other half (if that) I spent on gifts that I actually wanted.

By the time I was ready to go to university, all of my savings from cash gifts and a summer of work amounted to $2300, which my father matched for a total of $4600.

At the end of it all, my graduation without debt came down to more than just making 36 grand through scholarships, although, if it came down to it, I probably wouldn’t have gone to university if I hadn’t received any scholarships, as I come from a low-income household.

I probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to take on long-term debt by myself, as I’ve seen how debt has contributed to the stresses of many loved ones.

That said, I would like to take time to thank all of the people who have contributed to scholarships. You are investing in people like myself who would otherwise not obtain an education. The four years I spent in university have been some of the most enjoyable years of my life.

To anybody who thinks they aren’t worthy of a scholarship, or aren’t sure where to start, I can offer the following advice:

1. Even if your grades are garbage, as the CEO and Founder of Scholarships Canada says, “For 86 per cent of the scholarships in [scholarshipscanada.com’s] database, they do not require marks at all. It’s field of study, interest, location of study. Some are obviously connected to colleges or universities but the majority of scholarships do not require marks at all.”
2. Take note of the website mentioned in point #1 and make use of it.
3. Talk to your guidance counsellor in high school. They can help you look for scholarships that you might be eligible for. I had a really lovely guidance counsellor in high school who pointed me towards some application forms which I completed, and eventually came to know me so well that she applied for a scholarship on my behalf (which I was later awarded). The scholarship only required filling out some personal details, and she found it on the day it was due, so she did me a huge favour and filled out the application for me. Really, guidance counsellors are a tremendous help.
4. In university, you will likely be considered automatically for many scholarships, but some you will have to request consideration for. Check out your school’s scholarships pages for grants, scholarships, and bursaries, and talk to an Academic Advisor to make sure you’ve checked all of the boxes. They might even point you towards some local community organizations which offer scholarships.
5. Part-time jobs are great for earning extra money, but they can also help pay for your school in other ways (I also find I’m more productive with my schoolwork if I have a job that forces me to become more organized with my time). For example, from the Starbucks’ website: “Starbucks offers eligible partners up to $1,000 annually in reimbursement for tuition, books and fees at any accredited institution.” Great. Mind the asterisks, though!

That’s it. I really hope this article was useful, rather than a flex on my behalf. I read a similar article years ago and I thought to myself “Well, that’s not helpful. He’s in a completely different program and it sounds like so much work.”

I hope you are more mature than I was.