How Are Students Chosen To Receive Lottery Scholarships? – For every lottery scholarship offered to a student, there are several methods employed by the scholarship board in selecting the students.
Each lottery scholarship has eligibility requirements and methods of choosing eventual winners. On this article, we’ll be discussing how are students chosen to receive lottery scholarships especially in the United States.
The general norm and belief is that lottery scholarship is all about luck, this isn’t always the case and it entirely depends on the method used in selecting winners.
Surely, the word ‘lottery’ is often regarded as a situation whose positive result is purely decided by luck or governed by chance. Even at that, lottery scholarships are not always based on luck. Most scholarship lotteries have minimum required GPA which must be met by interested students. We are going to talk more about this on this article.
How Are Students Chosen To Receive Lottery Scholarships? We’ve carefully researched on this, read this article to find out what we discovered.
How Are Students Chosen To Receive Lottery Scholarships?
Lottery scholarships in the United States are awarded to students through four main methods, we’ll take a little time to explain these methods. Like we said earlier, the belief that lottery scholarships are purely won by luck isn’t always true, several lottery scholarships have requirements.
Read the four ways students are selected for lottery scholarships below.
1. Need Based Method
Several students that were selected for lottery scholarships in the past were given based on need. Majority of these student were from low-income families and this was a major factor in deciding winners of the lottery scholarship.
Students who are from low-income family as well as students with disabilities are usually major beneficiaries of need-based lottery scholarships.
In this type of lottery scholarship, the academic performance of the student isn’t a factor, what determines if the student will be awarded the scholarship is their household income level.
This doesn’t mean any student can just apply, there will be a minimum required academic grade for interested students. However, the scholarship board will concentrate more on students who really need the scholarship than those with good grades.
2. Academic Performance
Some lottery scholarships are awarded to students based on their academic performances. For lottery scholarships awarded based on academic performance, the student’s GPA becomes the deciding factor.
This method of selecting lottery scholarship winners is very common, especially on scholarships for high school seniors graduating and heading to college or university.
A scholarship that is awarded to a student based on academic performance mostly doesn’t consider the income level of the student’s family.
However, there are several lottery scholarships that looks at the student’s household income as well as academic performance. Such lottery scholarships are usually competitive and mostly won by brilliant students.
3. First Come, First Served
This method is often used by lottery scholarship boards with limited scholarship slots to be given to students. It is not a very common method used in selecting winners of lottery scholarship.
When a lottery scholarship is awarded to a student on first come, first served base, it means that the earlier you apply, the better your chances of being awarded the scholarship.
In such lottery scholarships, the academic performance and family income of the student won’t be a deciding factor, this is a less competitive scholarship and any student that meets the minimum eligibility requirement can be awarded.
4. Randomly
This is the common methods of awarding lottery scholarships to students especially in the United States. As a matter of fact, that’s what lottery scholarship is all about, its a game of chance, you could get picked randomly.
A lottery scholarship that picks students randomly for the award will not consider the family income or academic performance of winners. That not withstanding, there will be minimum requirements set for students to meet before they become eligible to submit their applications.
Often times, all a student needs to do is to enter their name in the pool, they will automatically win money for their college or university education if it’s drawn. Many lottery scholarship boards pick winners randomly, but each applicant must meet a certain eligibility requirement.
Features Of Lottery Scholarships
A lottery scholarship is quite different from merit-based scholarship, it is always open to every student that is currently attending or making plans to attend a college or university.
A scholarship lottery requires a student to meet a minimum GPA and ACT/SAT test score. Academic requirements for lottery scholarships are quite lower than merit-based scholarships.
Lottery scholarships don’t require essays from interested students, they don’t require interview either. You can read how to write scholarship essays.
Lastly, lottery scholarships are mostly a game of chance and any student can be picked for the award irrespective of their grades, lottery scholarships are not competitive and students don’t have to compete against each other academically for a chance to win, it’s mostly luck.
Lottery Scholarship Requirements
The requirements for lottery scholarships vary for each state. For example, the New Mexico Legislative Lottery Scholarship requires that applicants must reside in New Mexico and must have graduated from an accredited private or public high school in New Mexico.
For most of the lottery scholarships, a student is required to reside in the state where the scholarship board is located, and must have attended a high school in that state.
Secondly, majority of the lottery scholarships require students to maintain a minimum of 2.5 cumulative GPA to be eligible.
How Are Students Chosen To Receive Lottery Scholarships? Students are selected for lottery scholarships randomly, based on need, based on academic performance, and first come, first serve.
Ensure you check the requirement for the lottery scholarship you are applying to avoid wasting your time applying for a scholarship you aren’t eligible.
