As a Freshman or Sophomore in high school, there’s no reason you should be thinking about college already, right? You’ve got a few years before you have to start worrying about that sort of thing, so why think about it now? When most people think of scholarships, they think of free money you earn towards a college for your achievements, but did you know that you can start earning that scholarship money as soon as freshman year? 

There is such a thing as online writing contests that offer college scholarship money to winners. It might not seem like much now, but even $500 dollars can be a huge help in your future college career. 

There are a multitude of different writing and art scholarships that you can apply for and participate in online. Generally you’ll receive a prompt, word count and a deadline, and you can go from there with your creative freedoms. With these types of contests there is a range of the number of winners they select, some of them having just one with a large reward and others having many different kinds of winners with a variety of awards. 

To help you with this process, some websites will offer a link to look at past winners topics and pieces. I’d recommend doing that to get a good outline and idea of what a winning piece looks like. You’d be surprised how niche your topic can be. 

Some different contests I’ve found are:

Ocean Awareness Student Contest 

Prompt: ocean pollution

Accepted submissions include:

• Art pieces
• Prose
• Poetry
• Film/Video

The awards range from $50 to $1500 

Deadline is Monday, June 14, 2021

Bubba Wallace Live To Be Different Scholarship

Prompt: Share about a time when you encountered adversity

Accepted submissions is a 250-750 word essay

The award is $10,000

Deadline is May 31, 2021

A Sani Life Scholarship

Prompt: Reflect on the year 2020 with the pandemic among other things

Accepted submissions include a 200-800 word essay or a 2-5 minute video

The money opportunity is $1000

Deadline is June 1st, 2021 

To find out more information about any of these contests please visit the links provided. And remember that all of these links are open to all high school students–not just seniors.