It’s amazing how much free money is out there for graduating high school students if you just look. Although there are literally hundreds of scholarships out there for Canadian students, I will be focusing this article on the background for some of Canada’s largest scholarships. That is, scholarships with a value of at least ~$5,000 x 4 years (this means $5,000 per year for 4 years = $20,000 in total). The main reason I am doing this is because these are obviously the most difficult to win (because so many students apply) and have the most intensive processes (which would probably require more advice).
The great thing about one of these major scholarships is that often if you just win one (or two), you have your entire undergraduate education paid for. How amazing would that be?
The focus of the article is just to introduce you to Canada’s largest scholarship programs. Knowing what scholarships to apply to is the first step – and unfortunately, many students don’t even get this far. There are many deserving students who do not know about these scholarships, so it’s my hope that you’ll now have the opportunity to give many of them a shot.
Advice on applying for these scholarships will be provided in future articles. This article is simply an introduction to help you learn about the great opportunities out there.
Major Scholarships are Almost Always Application-Based
There is an unfortunate stereotype in a vast number of schools that scholarships are completely mark-based. It’s true that most universities hand out automatic entrance scholarships only based on grades (i.e. all graduating high school students who go to York University with a 95% average will receive a $3,000 x 4 years scholarship automatically). There are also some fairly large scholarships that are completely mark-based (e.g. York University hands out President’s Scholarships worth $5,400 x 4 years to the 18 students with the highest entrance averages).
What most students don’t realize (because they don’t look!), is that York University’s largest entrance scholarships are not mark-based. And this is true for almost every university.