Smart Strategies for Scholarships With Multiple Deadlines

Most scholarships are offered yearly with one deadline, but not all! There are some scholarships with multiple deadlines. Here's how to take advantage of them.

Private companies, organizations, and individuals who offer student scholarships don’t typically have any specific “rules” to follow. When designing their scholarships, committees will decide who the award is for, what the award is for, and the requirements for applicants to apply. They’ll make decisions about age, level of education, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, heritage, interests, skills, academic achievement, geographic region, financial need, demonstrated leadership, community service involvement, career interest, essay and project submissions, social media components, and how the award will be distributed to the recipient. It’s their money, so they get to decide what is important to them—including offering multiple application deadlines. 

How scholarship committees set deadlines

Many private companies and organizations benefit from receiving additional PR and media placements when they announce scholarship opportunities. Deciding when their scholarship will open for applications and when to set the deadline attached to the opportunity can therefore be a very strategic decision for a scholarship committee. Seeing the benefits of increased brand awareness from offering scholarships, many companies are choosing to offer several awards throughout the year with multiple application deadlines. This is technically a strategic move for companies, but it’s really a huge benefit to scholarship seekers. 

What to know about scholarships with multiple deadlines

Multiple scholarship deadlines increase the amount of preparation time you have for completing applications. There are three strategies scholarship seekers should utilize to maximize on the additional time you have to apply to these opportunities: 

  • Ask a teacher or a professor to review the application, essay, or other materials before submission.
  • Apply for other scholarships with only one deadline in the immediate future first, as scholarships with multiple deadline opportunities can be sent for the next consecutive deadline.
  • Review essays of past award recipients, if available. Many scholarship committees post the essay and name of the previous year’s recipients. Having additional preparation time allows you to gather more information to understand what the committee is looking for in a candidate.

Related: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Scholarship Search Strategy

Scholarship opportunities with multiple deadlines

  • OppU Achievers Scholarship: This $2,500 scholarship is open to high school seniors as well as undergraduate, graduate, professional, and trade school students who are US citizens with a minimum 3.0 GPA. College students must be at least part-time to be eligible. The scholarship is awarded quarterly with deadlines on September 30, December 31, March 31, and June 30.
  • ExtremeTerrain Scholarship: This essay scholarship is open to high school seniors and undergraduate students pursuing degrees in Environmental Studies, Ecology, Land Use, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Sustainable Land Management, Environmental Biology, Sustainable Agricultural Systems, or Parks and Recreation. The award is worth $2,500, and deadlines are October 15 and June 15.
  • CARiD Scholarship: This scholarship is open to US students ages 16–20 who are enrolled in post-secondary education. All applicants have to do is submit a photo inspired by any aspect of the automotive industry. The award is for $1,000, and deadlines are April 30 and October 31.  
  • Because College is Expensive Scholarship: This scholarship is open to high school juniors, seniors, current college students, and adults looking to head back to school. The scholarship is a sweepstakes offered quarterly with deadlines of March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 30.
  • AmericanTrucks Scholarship: This scholarship is open to high school seniors, full-time students at US technical institutes, and full-time students in two- and four-year college programs in traditional building trades, including carpentry, HVAC, electrical, or other related fields of study. Students in certificate programs are also eligible. You must be at least 18 years old to apply for this award of $2,500. The deadlines are October 15 and June 15. 

Related: Scholarship Search Spreadsheet Template

Multiple deadlines give scholarship seekers the benefit of additional time, if needed, when planning out and applying to scholarships to help pay for college. If you use the time strategically, you can submit overall stronger applications. You’ll also be able to manage your time more easily to apply for additional awards.

Get your scholarship search going by exploring our database of over $7 billion in awards!

Like what you’re reading?

Join the CollegeXpress community! Create a free account and we’ll notify you about new articles, scholarship deadlines, and more.

Join Now

Tags:

About Jean O'Toole

Jean O’Toole is an educational consultant and author of the bestselling book Scholarship Strategies: Finding and Winning the Money You Need. Over the past 15 years, she has helped tens of thousands of students in the United States. Individuals collectively have been awarded millions of dollars by applying Jean’s scholarship strategies. In 2008, Jean co-founded Connections101, a company specializing in providing motivational tools for scholarship searching. It is her goal to empower students to design their paths to their future without college debt. Visit Connections101.com for more information, and follow Jean on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

Join our community of
over 5 million students!

CollegeXpress has everything you need to simplify your college search, get connected to schools, and find your perfect fit.

Join CollegeXpress
Tariq Adam Khatib

Tariq Adam Khatib

High School Class of 2022

CollegeXpress helped me a lot. I am a Tanzania boy who finished my high school studies in Tanzania. I never knew I could get an opportunity to get a scholarship to study abroad. I am happy that now I know how to find the school to study abroad through CollegeXpress.

Maria  Fernanda

Maria Fernanda

High School Class of 2023

CollegeXpress is always telling you with time to spare when to apply for certain scholarships, what they require, and if you’re eligible or not. They also provide helpful tips for both incoming college students and current college students, such as what to absolutely have in your dorm.

Melanie Kajy

Melanie Kajy

High School Class of 2021

CollegeXpress has helped me tremendously during my senior year of high school. I started off using the college search to find more information about the universities I was interested in. Just this tool alone gave me so much information about a particular school. It was my one-stop shop to learn about college. I was able to find information about college tuition, school rank, majors, and so much more that I can't list it all. The college search tool has helped me narrow down which college I want to attend, and it made a stressful process surprisingly not so stressful. I then moved to the scholarship search tool to find scholarships to apply for because I can't afford to pay for tuition myself. The search tool helped me find scholarships that I was eligible for. The tool gave me all the information I could ever need about a particular scholarship that was being offered. The CollegeXpress scholarship search tool is so much better than other tools offered, like the Chegg scholarship search. Thanks to CollegeXpress, I was able to apply to tons of scholarships in a relatively easy way!

Farrah Macci

Farrah Macci

High School Class of 2016

CollegeXpress has helped me in many ways. For one, online searches are more organized and refined by filtering scholarships through by my personal and academic interests. Due to this, it has made searching for colleges and scholarships significantly less stressful. As a student, life can already get stressful pretty quickly. For me, it’s been helpful to utilize CollegeXpress since it keeps all of my searches and likes together, so I don’t have to branch out on multiple websites just to explore scholarship options.

Mataya Mann

Mataya Mann

High School Class of 2022

To say that CollegeXpress is a helpful tool would be an understatement as it is much more than that. Before finding CollegeXpress, all I knew was that I wanted to go to college, it was going to be insanely expensive, and I felt lost. CollegeXpress has given me access to resources such as helpful tips for applications and scholarship [opportunities], and helped guide me in a direction where I feel confident moving forward and pursuing a career. CollegeXpress has helped instill a spark in me that makes me want to continue and supports me in doing so.

College Matches
X

Colleges You May Be Interested In

Canisius University

Buffalo, NY

Cottey College

Nevada, MO

Emerson College

Boston, MA