Your Parents' Jobs, Your Background, and 50 Scholarships You Already Qualify For

Right now, there are scholarships you qualify for that have nothing to do with your GPA, your test scores, or your extracurriculars. They exist because of where your parents work, what union they belong to, which professional association they're part of, or some aspect of your family background that you've never thought to put on an application. These aren't small awards, either — some of them are worth $5,000, $10,000, or full tuition, and many of them go unclaimed every year because students simply don't know to look.

This is the most underused category of scholarships in existence. And the only thing standing between you and this money is a 30-minute conversation with your parents.

The Reality

Here's something that will probably annoy you: a huge percentage of available scholarship money is tied to things students can't control — their parents' employers, their family's professional affiliations, their religious denomination, their geographic background, their family structure. You might think that's unfair, and you might be right. But the money exists whether you think it's fair or not, and not claiming it because you didn't know about it is the real loss.

Scholarships.com maintains filters for over 50 categories based on family profession, background, and affiliation. The AFL-CIO, one of the largest labor federations in the country, reports that its member unions collectively offer [VERIFY: hundreds of scholarship programs totaling millions of dollars annually] to the children of union members. Many of these awards receive so few applications that some go partially or fully unawarded in a given year.

The same pattern holds for employer-specific scholarships. Major employers — from grocery chains to hospitals to manufacturing companies — frequently offer scholarships to the children of employees as part of their benefits packages. But these benefits are often buried in HR documents that your parents may have signed years ago and forgotten about. The money is sitting there. Nobody's told you about it.

The Play

Let's break this down by category, because there's a lot of ground to cover.

Parent's employer scholarships. Many medium-to-large companies fund scholarships for employees' children. Walmart, McDonald's, UPS, Starbucks, Tyson Foods, Target, Home Depot — these and many others have established scholarship programs. But it's not just corporate giants. Regional employers, hospitals, school districts, and government agencies often have them too. The trick is that your parent usually has to work there for a minimum period (often one year), and you often have to apply through the company's HR department or a designated foundation. Your parent's employee handbook or benefits portal is the place to start.

Union scholarships. If your parent is a union member, you likely qualify for at least one scholarship, and possibly several. Here are some of the major unions with established scholarship programs for members' children:

• SEIU (Service Employees International Union) — offers scholarships through local chapters and the national union
• UAW (United Auto Workers) — provides scholarships for children and grandchildren of members
• AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) — annual scholarship programs
• IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) — local and national awards
• Teamsters — the James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund awards scholarships to members' children [VERIFY: current annual award amounts and number of recipients]
• AFT (American Federation of Teachers) — the Robert G. Porter Scholars Program and others
• UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) — scholarship programs through the UFCW Charity Foundation

The AFL-CIO maintains a scholarship search tool that can help you find union-specific awards. Each union's national website also typically lists available scholarships.

Professional association scholarships. Even if your parent isn't in a union, they may belong to a professional association that offers dependent scholarships. Associations for nurses, engineers, accountants, real estate agents, pharmacists, IT professionals, and dozens of other fields commonly offer these. Your parent may not even remember joining — professional associations often come bundled with licensing or certification.

Military-connected scholarships. If a parent or grandparent served in the military, you have access to an entire ecosystem of scholarships beyond the GI Bill. The American Legion, VFW, AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, and Army Emergency Relief all fund scholarships for dependents of veterans and active-duty service members. The Fisher House Foundation's Scholarships for Military Children program is available at commissaries on military installations. [VERIFY: Current award amount for the Fisher House Foundation scholarship — it has historically been $2,000 per recipient.]

Parent's alma mater. Some colleges offer legacy scholarships or discounted tuition for children of alumni. This is worth checking even if your parent attended a school you're not planning to go to — the discount might change your mind.

Now let's talk about background-based scholarships that have nothing to do with where your parents work.

First-generation college students — meaning neither of your parents has a four-year degree — qualify for a wide range of scholarships specifically designed for first-gen applicants. The I'm First scholarship from the Center for Student Opportunity, the Dell Scholars Program, and numerous university-specific first-gen awards are available. [VERIFY: Current status of the I'm First scholarship program specifically.]

Students from immigrant families can access scholarships from organizations that support specific immigrant communities, as well as broader awards for children of immigrants. TheDream.US, Golden Door Scholars, and various ethnic and cultural organizations offer these.

Students from single-parent households qualify for scholarships from organizations like the Raise the Nation Foundation and various community foundations that specifically target this demographic.

Foster care youth and former foster youth have access to some of the most generous scholarships available, including the Foster Care to Success (FC2S) scholarships and state-specific programs. Many states have tuition waiver programs for current and former foster youth. [VERIFY: The number of states currently offering foster care tuition waivers — it has been reported as over 30.]

Homeschooled students and GED recipients both have specific scholarships designed for their educational paths, available through databases like Scholarships.com and through homeschool advocacy organizations.

Students of specific religious denominations — Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim, LDS, and others — can access scholarships from their denomination's national organizations, regional bodies, and individual congregations. Many local churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues offer scholarships that get very few applicants.

The Math

Here's why this category is so powerful: qualification-based scholarships have built-in applicant pool limits. A scholarship for children of IBEW members can only be applied to by children of IBEW members. That's a finite group. A scholarship for first-generation students at a specific university can only go to first-gen students at that university. The eligibility requirement itself shrinks your competition.

Compare this to an open merit scholarship where literally [QA-FLAG: banned word — replace] any high school senior in America can apply. Even if the qualification-based award is smaller, your expected return per hour of application work is almost always higher.

Let's say there's a $2,000 scholarship from your parent's union local. It gets 30 applicants and awards 3 scholarships. Your odds: 10%. Time to apply: maybe 2 hours. Expected value: $200 per hour of work. Now compare that to a $10,000 national scholarship that gets 25,000 applicants and awards 5 scholarships. Your odds: 0.02%. Time to apply: maybe 8 hours. Expected value: $2 per hour of work. The smaller award is 100 times more efficient.

This math is why doing the qualifier inventory exercise we're about to describe is worth every minute of your time. [QA-FLAG: single-sentence para]

What Most People Get Wrong

The biggest mistake, by far, is never doing the inventory. Students apply to scholarships they find on Google and skip the ones they'd find by asking their parents simple questions. Here's the exercise, and it takes 30 minutes:

Sit down with your parent or guardian. Go through these questions one at a time. Write down every answer.

1. Where do you work, and does your employer offer any scholarships for employees' children?
2. Are you a member of a union? Which one? What local?
3. Do you belong to any professional associations or organizations?
4. Did you attend college? Where?
5. Have you or anyone in our family served in the military? Which branch? Are you a member of the American Legion, VFW, or any other veterans' organization?
6. Are we members of a church, temple, mosque, or other religious community? Which denomination?
7. Are you a member of any fraternal organizations? (Elks, Moose, Rotary, Knights of Columbus, Masons, Eastern Star, etc.)
8. Do you belong to any cultural, ethnic, or heritage organizations?
9. Are we members of any cooperatives, credit unions, or mutual aid organizations?

Then take each answer and search for it plus the word "scholarship." That's it. "[Employer name] scholarship," "[union name] children scholarship," "[denomination] student scholarship." You will find money. Not might — will.

The second mistake is assuming these scholarships are too small to bother with. A $500 scholarship from your parent's credit union takes 20 minutes to apply for. That's $1,500 per hour of work if you get it. Five of those "small" awards add up to $2,500 — which is a semester's worth of textbooks at many schools, or a month of rent.

The third mistake is waiting until senior year to look. Some of these scholarships have early deadlines, and some require you to have been active in the affiliated organization for a certain period. If your parent is a union member and the union scholarship requires you to mention union-sponsored activities you've participated in, it helps to know that before your senior year.

Start the inventory now. Search this week. Bookmark what you find. Apply when the windows open. This is the closest thing to free money that exists in the scholarship world, and the only reason more students don't get it is because they never thought to ask.

This article is part of the 5 Things That Get Scholarships You Didn't Think About series at SurviveHighSchool.

Related reading: The Specific Types of Community Service That Actually Win Scholarships, Weird Talents and Obscure Hobbies That Have Scholarships Attached, Regional Awards That Pay More Than National Ones (With a Fraction of the Competition)

Sources:

• Scholarships.com, family profession and background scholarship filters, scholarships.com
• AFL-CIO Union Plus Scholarship Program and union scholarship directory, aflcio.org
• SEIU scholarship programs, seiu.org
• UAW scholarship programs, uaw.org
• AFSCME scholarship programs, afscme.org
• Teamsters James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund, teamster.org
• American Legion scholarship programs, legion.org
• VFW scholarship programs, vfw.org
• Fisher House Foundation Scholarships for Military Children, fisherhouse.org
• Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, mcsf.org
• TheDream.US, thedream.us
• Foster Care to Success (FC2S), fc2success.org
• Center for Student Opportunity / I'm First, imfirst.org
• Dell Scholars Program, dellscholars.org