Need big money to pay for college?
Here’s how one grad managed to score $ 150K in scholarship funds
Gabrielle McCormick’s journey started with a fall.
In November of her senior year of high school, she tore her Achilles tendon during a basketball game. The injury simultaneously crushed her dreams of playing college basketball and any hopes she had of earning the athletic scholarship she was counting on.
“My entire high school identity changed because I wasn’t a studentathlete,” she said. “I really struggled to let my basketball dreams go.”
Ten years later, McCormick has completely paid for her education with more than $ 150,000 in scholarships.
She quickly found out there is a scholarship out there for everything, including students with red hair, women over 5- foot- 10 and lovers of the game Minecraft.
And now the successful entrepreneur is helping others get on the path to a debt- free education.
“It is possible; you just have to have a system in place,” she said.
As a result of skyrocketing college tuition, student loan debt has reached an all- time high of $ 1.34 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
At private universities, families have to shell out $ 33,480 on average for one year of tuition. In- state public schools
are a cheaper option, though still a major investment, at $ 9,650 per year.
Without an athletic scholarship, McCormick wasn’t sure how she could afford it. “I said to myself, ‘ Gabrielle, you’ve got to figure out how to win scholarships.’ ”
She seemed to be the ideal candidate. She was a three- sport athlete, No. 4 in her class, ran her own art business and participated in several extracurricular activities.
But still her hunt for scholarships came with roadblocks.
McCormick’s research began at a bookstore in her small hometown of Greenville, Texas, 45 minutes outside Dallas. That netted little. She went to her college counselor almost every day, but she was only “as helpful as she could be.”
“I did not know what I was doing, and because of that I wasted a lot of time,” McCormick said.
She said through trial and error, she developed a winning strategy. She didn’t qualify for big national scholarships such as the Gates Millennium Scholars program, so she focused on small, local scholarships.
“Everything under $ 2,000 was what really helped,” she said.
McCormick created a “scholarship profile” for herself, identifying important characteristics that could earn her money.
“I literally typed in everything about myself, added the word ‘ scholarship’ and tried to find out if there were scholarships I could win,” she said.
She used her scholarship essays like a form of therapy, sharing the pain of get- ting injured, her grandfather’s death and her mother’s battle with cancer.
She applied for more than 50 scholarships, from generic essay contests to merit- based offers to one for sportsmanship.
“A good mix is really where the power is,” she said.
In total, she earned more than $ 150,000 in scholarship money, but she estimates the true value of everything she received is closer to $ 200,000. She advised students to be open to any opportunity that can add value to their education, not just money.
She put that money toward her undergraduate degree and her master’s in business administration, which she completed in five years.
McCormick studied accounting at Texas A& M University- Commerce, where she is now pursuing her doctorate.
Parents and students alike would come to McCormick for advice on how they could pay for their education. She realized school counselors often weren’t able to give adequate attention to each student.
McCormick worried that students felt vital information was “behind some hidden curtain that you have to pay admission for.”
“It shouldn’t be this difficult,” she said.
She created a resource for students searching for scholarships. Her free online curriculum walks students through the application process from start to finish.
McCormick, now 27, said she wants students to know that no matter the roadblocks, there’s money out there.