Donor: Kelli Kilpatrick - Kilpatrick College & Career
Available to: Miss Texas' Teen delegates
Scholarship Amount: $500
Application Deadline: June 1, 2025
Scholarship Qualifications & About:
Tackling College Debt Scholarship: Crafting Strategies to Beat College Costs
Recent data indicates that 54% of bachelor’s degree students who attended public and private four-year colleges graduated with student loans, according to the College Board. Students leave college with an average balance of $29,100 in education debt and are saddled with a student loan payment for at least the first 10 years of their professional life, if not more.
With student loan debt hitting record highs, it's no joke. But guess what? When you compete in Miss Texas, you're not just vying for a crown; you're also competing for some awesome scholarships that can help tackle those college costs head-on. Every college scholarship won, large or small, is getting you closer to graduating college debt-free!
To achieve this, it is important to have a high degree of financial literacy around the total cost to attend college, have conversations with family about college savings, and consistently engage in scholarship search efforts.
Application Requirements
Please submit a ONE page essay in PDF foromat that complies with the following prompts:
Step One: let’s do a bit of vision casting and think deeply about your post-college aspirations (i.e., what you dream of doing after college). You might know exactly what that is, you might have an idea of several things that could be, or you might not be sure at all. All these answers are correct if it is truly where you are today!
Step Two: identify three (3) colleges or universities that align with your goals and share insights about why each is a good fit for what you imagine your college experience to be.
Step Three: search for details regarding the cost to attend each institution, beyond just tuition (fees, room, board, books, supplies, travel, personal expenses, miscellaneous, etc.). You can easily find this information on each university’s official website or through reliable sources like BigFuture or the College Scorecard. (Pro Tip: Conduct a Google search with “total cost of attendance budget for XYZ university”).'
Step Four: engage in an open dialogue with your family about your college education with a significant focus on ways to pay for the costs. Some questions to begin the conversation could include (these are just suggestions):
• What funds, if any, will be available for my education when I begin my freshman year in college?
• How much impact does the total cost of attendance have on the college that I choose to attend? Is it the main factor, is it an important factor but doesn’t have to drive the final college choice, or is it not an important factor at all?
• How important is my effort in securing scholarships to minimize the cost of my college education? Are college scholarships a necessity, are they nice to have but not critical, or are they not necessary at all?
• With what we know today about all of the ways to pay for college along with the rising cost of college, does it look like I will need to take out student loans to contribute to the cost of my college education?