51. The Ultimate Guide to a Debt-Free College Journey with Dave Peterson

Imagine unlocking the treasure chest of a debt-free college education for your child. That's precisely what Dave Peterson, fondly known as Dave the scholarship coach, has mastered. Join us as the Burnt Pancakes family welcomes this sage of scholarships to share his journey from a worried parent to a beacon of hope for families striving to sidestep the student loan pitfall. Dave's son's staggering $95,000 scholarship bounty is a testament to the power of early and strategic planning, and throughout our conversation, Dave unveils the map to this hidden treasure for your own college-bound buccaneers.

What's the early bird's reward in the world of scholarships? A veritable worm feast, it turns out! High school juniors and their parents, perk up your ears as Dave guides us through the prime time for scholarship hunting. We spotlight exclusive opportunities for juniors, dissect the fine print of scholarship terms, and underscore the importance of organization and prompt communication. Ever heard of the VFW Voice of Democracy scholarship? This could be the perfect steppingstone for your student's scholarship quest, and we're here to tell you why.

In our final chapter, we pull back the curtain on the staggering $100 million in unclaimed scholarships and arm you with Dave's battle-tested strategies for standout applications. From leveraging the personal touch in recommendation letters to maintaining a meticulous volunteer record, these insights can help your student's application shine. We also navigate the complexities of scholarship policies at various colleges and emphasize the importance of flexibility as students journey through their college years—my own son's pivot from history to economics is a case in point. So, join us for this transformative talk, and let's chart a course toward a debt-free diploma!

(00:09) - College Tuition and Debt-Free Scholarships

(11:15) - Navigating Scholarship Opportunities for Juniors

(21:04) - Maximizing Scholarship Opportunities for Students

(25:57) - Navigating College Scholarships and Applications

Connect with Dave:

Podcast - Your Daily Scholarship Podcast
Instagram - @davethescholar1
Newsletter - https://substack.com/@nodebtcollege.com

📺 Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpw5ui4uxJHx0tLFVtpnfSkpObfc4d-K

You can find Katie at:
website: burntpancakes.com
YouTube: @burnt.pancakes
Instagram: @burntpancakeswithkatie
Email: katie@burntpancakes.com

🚽 Did you know Katie is also a Certified Potty Trainer? 🚽

☎️ Schedule a 1:1 chat today: Schedule Here
💻 Digital Potty Training Course HERE
📖  Potty Training E-Book HERE
🆓  FREE potty training resources HERE
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Some episodes include affiliate links at no cost to you. 

Transcript

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00:09 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Hello, hello and welcome back to the Burnt Pancakes podcast. I am your host, katie Fenske, and I'm here to remind moms that everyone burns their first pancake. Now, if I say the words college tuition, does that make you panic? Because I know the thought of sending my three boys to college is enough to take my breath away. But that is. The reality of today's world is that we are going to be sending our kids to colleges that cost a lot of money. My husband and I are very, very fortunate that, because of our parents and scholarships that we received, we were able to graduate debt free, and we would love to be able to do that for our kids one day. So I have a very special guest coming on today my first ever dad on this conversation. I'll call this my dad conversation. 

00:59
I'm sitting down and talking with Dave Peterson, also known as Dave the scholarship coach. Dave is the father of a third year college student who, to this date, has won over $95,000 in scholarships and is on track to not only graduate from college debt free, but entirely from free for free. Dave now works with high school students and their families to help them fund their own debt free college journey, and he is the host of his own podcast, your Daily Scholarship, where he features a new scholarship or college funding tidbit every day. I absolutely love this conversation as we were talking like I just had question after question after question about the topic of college scholarships. This is not something that I knew much about I am not quite there yet with my kids but this conversation really made me start thinking of the planning we're going to do when they're in high school and before they start college. So I think you will absolutely love this conversation. Hi, dave, welcome to the podcast. 

02:09 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Hi Katie, thanks for having me on. 

02:11 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I will say you are the first official dad on my conversation, so feel honored. 

02:18 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
When I woke up this morning and knew this was on my agenda, I was wondering about that. I've listened to some episodes and I had not found any other dads yet, but I hadn't made my way through the full library. 

02:27 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I do have ideas of dads I want to bring on and include my husband. I want him to come on at some point, but it's like, oh yeah, we'll do that one day, Like he hasn't jumped on yet. So I'm excited about this. But your topic is for all of us parents. You are Dave, the scholarship coach. Give us some background on your son and how you became the scholarship coach. 

02:50 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so I got into the world of scholarships strictly to help my son. I knew I wanted him to graduate without student loan debt and when he hit high school it kind of dawned on me that my wife and I had not done the savings that we would need to do for him to go to school debt free. So I started to learn about scholarships. I just dove all in. For about a year I educated myself. He didn't apply for any scholarships. And then his junior year is when we got going with him. We were fortunate he had some early success. He won his first scholarship the first half of his junior year, won two more by the end of that year and then senior year. We just went all in. He applied for close to 100 scholarships before he graduated high school. And yeah, yep, so we even let him quit his part-time job. Now it was around the time of COVID, so that had a little influence as well. 

03:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So yeah, You're right, this is pain for school, so that is like a little bit of a job. 

03:49 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yep, yeah, absolutely so, yeah. So at graduation. We live in a smallish town, so if a scholarship, if he was awarded a scholarship, he might show up in the newspaper and then senior awards night. His name just kept being called over and over again for scholarships, and so I had a lot of friends and family asking how did you guys do this? What did you do? Yeah, yep. So after we got him off to college for the next year, I worked with some friends and families kids to see was this just applicable for my son or was this something that could be replicated? And I found it could be replicated for other kids who were willing to put in some time and effort. So I had success with that. And then so, about a little over two years ago, I launched my business, nodeckcollegecom, and working with families to help them on their own debt-free college journey. 

04:39 - Katie Fenske (Host)
now oh, that is so awesome. Do you work one-on-one with parents, or I do? 

04:46 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
I have a few different ways that I work with students. My premier tier, I guess I would call it, would be one-on-one coaching, where I go out and find the scholarships and then I help them through the entire application process. 

04:57 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, so I have tons of questions because my oldest son is going to be 10 soon, so this isn't quite on the radar, but my husband and I have already talked about oh my gosh, how are we going to send three boys to college? 

05:11 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. 

05:13 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So, right now, cost of college, because we have friends who have high school age kids and they have dropped numbers like, oh, this university cost this and it's enough to give me a heart attack, sure. So the thing is I went in the early 2000s when I think it was affordable. What's tuition like nowadays? 

05:34 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so the numbers that I have I'm pulling from US News so I consider that a pretty reputable source. They are showing for just tuition and fees, so not housing, food, books and other expenses, which you can figure anywhere from double to maybe even one and a half times what tuition can cost. So just tuition and fees, tricing in states about 11,000 a year, public out of states about 24,000 a year and then private averages over 42,000 a year. 

06:04 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Per year. 

06:05 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Oh, per year. 

06:06 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, let's just take a minute and breathe for a second. 

06:08 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, no kidding, I have a heart attack. 

06:10 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, but you said it is possible to graduate debt free. So my husband and I, we are so fortunate that both of our families, our parents, were able to do that. I got a scholarship. I had parents that helped out and that was huge for us because I know a lot of people are like, instead of a mortgage, paying off their school loans, so they're in their films, yeah, and that's a problem right now. Oh yeah, is it possible to go debt free nowadays? 

06:34 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
100%. Yep, it's going to take some time and effort and some strategy, but, yes, it is possible. Of course I focus a lot on scholarships, Okay. 

06:43
I will say you know, if you can save things like 529 plans, those are great Tax advantage ways to do that. That's not my area of expertise, but I do have some connections with that particular guy who goes by the college dude dance and a wits. He's a certified financial planner and and that's his thing. Yeah, Yep. So if savings, that's a great way to start. But if that's not possible, say you know you didn't save like I did, then scholarships are a great, great route to look at. There are scholarships for just about any student. You don't have to be a straight, a student valedictorian, my student. He was a good student but he was not not the top student in his class by any means. So yeah, yep, and you don't have to be an athlete. My son is far from an athlete, although he did win a scholarship for playing Little League baseball. So he only played one year and so yeah my kids are in it right now. 

07:36 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I got a yeah. 

07:37 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, start keeping a list of everything that your kids do and you would be surprised the scholarships that you'll find, even as far back as, like I said, his little league days. 

07:49 - Katie Fenske (Host)
No way. I feel like questions are just like popping up in my head, because one of my questions was are there things that your kids can do to help their chances? So, like they say volunteering or extracurricular Little League, I guess helps. Yeah, some things they can do, or is it that doesn't matter that they have volunteer hours or Well, yeah, volunteer hours. 

08:12 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
of the students I work with and I tend to work with students are probably, you know, on the higher end academically. The one area that they typically are lacking is volunteerism. So there are five, what I call the five pillars of winning scholarship. So academics, extracurriculars, volunteerism, leadership and work experience. Don't think of those like a checklist, think of those more as ways the student can express their interests. So the more you can weave those areas together, I'll give you at least one example with my son. 

08:44
So he planned on being a history professor. That was his dream from a very surprisingly young age. So of course, he did well in his history courses in school. Extracurricular wise, he was in the high school history club and then senior year he became the president of that club. But he volunteered at a local history museum. So he was like the tour guide for the little museum and he helped supervise building a Vietnam veterans memorial display for local veterans. So it wove that story together of, hey, this kid is really interested in history and he's showing it in a lot of different ways. And I've worked with students who, like one, she, wanted to become a vet tech. So when I started working with her I said could you look for a job at PetSmart or PetCo or something like that and quit your job at whatever fast food place? 

09:33 - Katie Fenske (Host)
it was. 

09:33 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
So we were able to help build that narrative. She was already doing a lot of great things. She volunteered at her animal shelter local animal shelter and she was going to school half a day in a vet clinic already. So again, she had built a nice narrative and I was able to just help her build a little bit extra. So the more you can show a passion for something, that's really critical for winning scholarships. 

09:58 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Interesting. Do you ever get kids that are like I don't know. I don't know what I'm into, I don't know what I want to major in. 

10:03 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, I do, and I'll say it is definitely harder for them If you have younger kids. Have them try out lots of things, especially like middle school, in this first year or two of high school. Let them try everything and then kind of narrow down what do they not like and what do they seem to gravitate towards? Interesting? Yeah, yep, that definitely helps. 

10:25 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay. Another question I had was at what grade in high school should they start applying Like? Is there a too soon? Are they allowed to start freshman year? How does that work? 

10:39 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm going to give you a couple answers. So, believe it or not, there are scholarships out there for I've seen now as young as third grade. They are very few and far between. 

10:49 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I mean I. 

10:51 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I don't want to say I would recommend it, but I certainly would not say don't do it. 

10:57 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I think it's awesome. 

10:59 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
They're going to be typically things like art contest or maybe it's short little essay contest. Middle school it starts to bump up a little bit more, and then high school a little bit more. But I'll give my real kind of honest goodness answer is junior year. There are a couple reasons for that. So first is that Kids don't apply for much like as adults. We apply for jobs, we apply for mortgages, credit cards, whatever. This could be the first time a kid has ever applied for anything and just that process can be daunting. So getting them to apply for some scholarships their junior year is going to give them a leg up on I'll call them their competitors, their peers, who are going to be applying for scholarships, waiting till their senior year. It's also fantastic preparation for their college application process Because they will have, they will understand kind of the same questions and resume things that colleges are looking for, because that's what scholarships are looking for. 

11:53
And there are some really unique scholarships for juniors. There is a full ride scholarship that's only open to juniors. Yeah, four-year full ride, everything from tuition to housing and books. February 1st, a different scholarship that covers full tuition for four years, open to juniors, opened. So yeah, there's lots of opportunities for juniors and then if you apply for those, I always tell the students I work with we want to win those, but we don't expect to win those. They're they're super tough, but they're awesome experience to get you prepared for these huge scholarship opportunities that open up senior year. 

12:31 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Mmm. Oh, that's a good to know. So you don't actually have to have like An admission to a college to actually win these scholarships yet Is there a stipulation like, let's say, you don't get into college or you decide not to go, do you not get that scholarship? It's? 

12:48 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
gonna vary from scholarship to scholarship, so most of the ones I'm talking about right right now fall into the category of private outside scholarships or offer by businesses and philanthropic organizations. Some scholarships are going to say you have to use this money for college. There are others, including many, my son one where they just sent him a check and Well, he, he and we were responsible and we applied it to college like he could have used it to buy a car or whatever he wanted. There was no stipulation and, frankly, no way they would know how that money was spent. Okay, so, as his dad did, you set up a system for tracking all these scholarships, like here's your bank account. 

13:23 - Katie Fenske (Host)
This is where we're putting the money, because I feel like you said he got 95 thousand dollars worth of scholarships. Yeah, he's. 

13:31 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
He's in his third year of college right now and he's over 95 thousand and we can talk a little bit about some of the other ways to save some money because it's related, but he's Looks like he's gonna graduate early this summer, so wow, through in three years, yeah wow, so did you organize like? 

13:50 - Katie Fenske (Host)
it seems like it's a lot to keep track of what these? Scholarships. How? How do you go about that? 

13:56 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so I just set up a pretty simple spreadsheet Kept a name of the organization, a link to the actual scholarship, the, the date the application was due, the dollar amount and then a date that we expected to hear back. Now A dirty little secret of scholarships is they're almost always late with their notifications. Oh, that's good to know, yeah. 

14:14 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yep. So if you don't hear on that, date, that doesn't mean you didn't win. 

14:18 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
If it's a month later, you probably didn't win. So they're usually late, but they're close, you know, within a week or two. Yeah, and it's always well. Two bits of tips or tricks here get your kids in the habit of checking their emails regularly. I was surprised to learn this when I started working with with kids is that they don't check email, check the social media, but not their email exactly. 

14:42
Yeah, yep, and they might find out they lost a scholarship via social media because the the winner might be announced. But if they're the winner, they're gonna get an email. Most likely it's not gonna just be announced on social media, okay, and if you you? Know. The other reason to keep your eye on that email is that if you are selected, there can be a very small window to claim that prize. Oh, we don't know for sure that this is the case, but we very much suspect that one of the scholarships my son won. 

15:09
He was not their first first choice because it was so far after we expected to hear anything we thought, oh, he didn't get this. And Like two months later he got an email from a friend of mine. And like two months later he got an email. So we suspect he was probably not their first choice. But you know what? It was a $20,000 scholarship, so we didn't care what we'll take it. Yeah, kidding, yep. 

15:31 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh whoa, Do you remember what his first scholarship was? That he I do. 

15:36 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, it's called the VFW voice of democracy and there's only one scholarship I recommend for every high school student and that's it. There's a few reasons for that. First of all, you can enter every year of high school. It's a different essay topic and Everything starts at your local VFW post. So it's not guaranteed that your post is going to give a prize, but pretty much all of them do, and it's not. It's not anything huge, but it's a way to get their feet wet and they could win, you know, a few hundred dollars, maybe even a thousand dollars at the local level. And if they do well at the local level, then they move up through the district and state and into nationals. 

16:12 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Wow, can any of the scholarship money go towards room and board? Or are there some that say this is just for tuition. Others you said some are just cash. 

16:23 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yep. So again, it does vary from scholarship to scholarship. I Would say at least half the scholarships are gonna say it has to be used for tuition, but there's, there are plenty of scholarships out there that can be used for room board books. Or, like we said, you know, you just get a check and sure as to do what you want. 

16:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Wow, yeah did your son go away to school, or is he? 

16:46 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, he goes a thousand miles door-to-door. So yeah, we live in. 

16:50 - Katie Fenske (Host)
South Florida. Hard for you. 

16:53 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
It was. Yeah, that first year was tough and you know it's gotten a little easier, but yeah yeah, he read there. 

16:58 - Katie Fenske (Host)
We one of the things that? 

16:59 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
yeah, one of the things the scholarships has helped paid for is his travel back and forth. Yeah you know he has that money in his account, so we don't really send him gas money or anything like that. 

17:08 - Katie Fenske (Host)
He's incredible, yeah, okay, so how do we find all these scholarships? It sounds like there's way more out there than I even knew existed. How do you find? 

17:17 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Oh yeah. 

17:18
Number of sources. So there are some great scholarship websites like scholarshipscom, scholarship owl going Mary. There's about a half a dozen really good in-depth sites. Those are pretty much all vetted scholarships and they're they're legitimate. The problem is that a lot of people are looking in those same places, so you're gonna face a lot of competition. So, beyond that, talk to your high school guidance counselor. Hopefully that's a good source. You can look for local community foundations doing Google searches. A really unique one is law firms. Almost every law firm uses scholarships as a marketing tool. Now, they're not huge, they're like a thousand, maybe like five thousand for some. But you don't have to be a law student. Most of the time it's simply an essay that the student has to write and if you start freshman year, you have four years of of getting better and better at that scholarship. 

18:12 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Wow, oh, that's so interesting. Is FAFSA still, because I remember that from when I was applying for school. What is that? Is it worth it? 

18:25 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, yeah, so that stands for the free application for federal student aid, and is it worth it? Well, some schools are going to say you have to do it, it's required if you want to be considered. Even for some schools require it for merit-based aid. It's simply their way of kind of getting the student into the system. But typically it's for families and students who might be eligible for need-based aid. It's, for instance, how the Pell Grant is determined. 

18:51
There were some big changes to the FAFSA this year and I am not a FAFSA expert, but the person I mentioned before, dan Senowitz, the college dude, that's kind of his area of expertise and yeah, things changed this year. I know one of the negatives was that they used to look at the fact if you had more than one student in college at a time. They would take that in consideration. Now they don't. So it's basically your family's income and assets and that's how they use that to determine what they're going to offer you typically in need-based aid. I think something like 99% of the colleges in the country use it. There are some who don't, but yeah, it's something that you're more than likely going to be faced filling out during senior year starting your senior year and all over the college. 

19:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You don't rely on that for college. 

19:44 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
I would not. You know, again, every family is different. If your finances are such that you think you will qualify for need-based aid, then again I wouldn't say I would rely on it, but you could have a reasonable expectation of what you'll get. One thing to look out for, though, is that, when you get your financial aid award letters from the colleges, understand what they're offering you, because sometimes they can be a little tricky and it looks like they're giving you free money and it's actually a student loan, so just double check what you're being offered and how do you do that? 

20:15 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Like just read the fine print, you got to read the fine print. 

20:20 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, make sure that it says something like scholarship or grant. If it says loan, it will use the word loan, at least as far as I've seen. But they just kind of blend it in. They'll say here's your total package. You need to know what that package is made up of that is interesting. 

20:36 - Katie Fenske (Host)
That's probably really key. What are some of the most unique scholarships you've seen? Oh boy. 

20:45 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, one that's available right now is from an organization called the Tall Clubs, so it's for people who are tall. 

20:54 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I love it. 

20:55 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's like over, like over six two or six three, for boys and a little bit shorter for girls. So yeah, so that's one. I think there's one for redheaded students, left handers there's that we talked about like the Little League one. It's actually not for somebody who's excels in baseball, it's for somebody who played baseball and is going into something else. So that's how my son qualified, so yeah, so yeah, I mean, if you name something, there's probably a scholarship for it. 

21:26 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Probably something. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I want to look these up there. 

21:31 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing, and something like a hundred million dollars in scholarships go unclaimed every year, so there's just a ton of opportunity out there, yeah. 

21:39 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Whoa. So just no one applies for them, and yeah yep, yep. Oh my gosh. 

21:45 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
So always make sure that when you apply that you meet the eligibility requirements. But I have heard a few cases of people who have applied for scholarships that they didn't qualify for and they still won because they were the only applicant. So don't make that a strategy. Okay, but you know, you might. You might try one or two Right. 

22:03 - Katie Fenske (Host)
What like time commitment? Like if you're applying for an application, what should you expect to put in? 

22:11 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
It's going to vary by the student's age, but I'll talk to seniors, since they're going to be the ones doing most of the scholarship applications. I think a good rule of thumb is either 30 minutes a day or three hours a week. More is better, but I know students have a lot on their plate from school to extracurriculars and trying to have a social life as well. So I think, if they can can do either 30 minutes a day or three hours a week. They can apply for enough scholarships that, assuming they're doing a good job with their applications, they have nice essays and nice letters of recommendation, they should expect some level of success. 

22:45 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Can you just get a letter of recommendation that can just be for every scholarship, or does it have to be specifically for that scholarship? 

22:54 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
You can. I think a best practice would be, whoever is going to write your letter or the people who are going to write your letters, ask them to keep it on file as a Google doc or whatever they're using, and just plug in the name of the scholarship uniquely each time. Okay, that way it looks a little more personalized, but it doesn't require that person to put in too much more effort. Got it? Now there are some scholarships where the student can't submit that letter themselves. It has to come directly from the recommender. So know what those requirements are. I'd say it's about 50-50. Sometimes you can send it. Another great tip for letters of recommendation is if it can be on letterhead. So if it's like from a teacher, the school's letterhead, or if it's your boss at your work company letterhead, that just makes it look a little more professional. 

23:39 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay. So, boss, teacher, I was going to ask you who are the best people to ask for a letter. 

23:43 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so teachers, especially if they're related to the major that you're going into. So again, my son it was his history teachers, english teachers are always a nice source, even if you're not going into English, because they're typically better writers. Your coaches, if you're an athlete, your boss, the place you volunteer, or places you volunteer, whoever's in charge there and speaking of volunteer, keep track of the hours, the number of hours the student volunteers over the course of a year or over the course of their career, and also try to be very specific about what the impact was. So it'd be one thing to say I volunteered at a homeless shelter, but it's far more impactful to say, well, I volunteered at this homeless shelter from these dates to these dates and we fed however many hundred people. So kind of quantify and qualify the impact you're having. 

24:39 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Do you ever suggest because I'm sure some people get asked to write letters and they're like, oh god, another letter of recommendation Do you ever suggest kind of like a, an outline or a hey, could you add these bolt Like how do you do it in a way that's not like? This is what I want you to say in my letter versus which in mind writing me a letter. 

25:01 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, even the teacher who knows you the best doesn't know you as well as you know yourself. So one of the things I recommend a way to get started with scholarships is actually putting together your resume. And your resume should always be changing. You should always be updating it with your achievements and awards and such. But whatever the most recent version of your resume is, give that to the person you're going to ask to write the letter and that way they can reference some of those achievements and you could even highlight. This is kind of the angle I'm going for with the scholarship. This is my narrative, so here's the things that perhaps you would like to mention. Of course it has to come from that person, so you can only give so many suggestions, but that's a good way to at least let them know kind of your thoughts about it and kind of the angle that you're taking with it and how it would help. 

25:50 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, because I'm sure they're like, let me help you. Anyway, I can, and you can kind of tailor it a little bit. 

25:56 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Sure, yep, absolutely. 

25:57 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Are a lot of scholarships just awarded to one student, or there are some scholarships that are like we're taking 10 people and giving it. 

26:05 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yep, it's a mix. So I mentioned that VFW one. So they give out gosh, it's got to be several thousand prizes between the local, state and national level. So that's one of the strategies that I recommend is find scholarships that have multiple prizes, a lot of the senior year scholarships, especially like in fall of a student senior year. There are some really big ones like Coca-Cola is one, equitable is equitable, excellence is another. There's about a dozen or more that give a ton of prizes, ranging from a few thousand up to some really big prizes. 

26:43
So if you meet the eligibility criteria, I recommend applying for those. They're still competitive, but at least you have more than one chance. For the scholarships that only give one prize or maybe two prizes, you want to be focusing on things that match your narrative. So again, for my son it was things related to history. For somebody else it could be I don't know if they're going to go into medical school, things related to becoming a doctor, but whatever your narrative is, those are the scholarships you want to focus on, especially if there's just the single prize being offered. 

27:15 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, what am I missing? Because I feel like there's so much Like what are some other common questions that you get. 

27:24 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, really honestly, that question you asked about how much time. I think that's the question I get the most. 

27:29 - Katie Fenske (Host)
How do I get my kid to sit down for 30 minutes a day and do this? 

27:33 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah Well, and that's another reason. If you can start them early, they've gotten into the habit and it just becomes part of their routine. 

27:40 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Are some of the questions or some of the essays cut and paste where you're like. This one asked this question. I can use this essay or a lot of them. You got to start from scratch. 

27:51 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
So there's kind of two categories. There's the scholarships that are asking more about you, the student, and, yes, you can kind of build a body of four or five essays that you can cut and paste. I would very rarely recommend using the exact same essay, but just small tweaks can be enough. Then there are going to be topic-based essays that you're probably not going to be able to reuse very often. Although there are a few topics, you'll find quite a bit. One is going to be like distracted driving or reckless driving. So if you did a little research early on, you could kind of build a body of ideas that you could just pull from and plug into a bunch of different distracted driving scholarships. 

28:31 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So the essay you're writing is about distracted driving, or yeah? 

28:34 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
distracted driving prevention. So everything from drunk driving to texting while driving Interesting. Yeah, I think that's probably the most common topical theme, but really the most common theme is going to be more asking about the student. 

28:50 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, okay, yeah. What else am I missing? What? 

28:55 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
So once you have decided on a college, or at the point of you're looking at different colleges, understand the schools, what they call scholarship stacking or scholarship displacement policy. Scholarship stacking means that you can take the outside scholarships that you've won and stack them on top of whatever their financial aid offer is. 

29:15 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay. 

29:15 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Scholarship displacement means that if you bring in outside scholarships, they will take away either dollar for dollar or at some ratio, whatever they're offering. Now I'll be a little flippant. We said we were not going to patronize colleges that basically penalize my son for doing extra work, so we took those off the table. 

29:35 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Are there a lot of colleges that do that? 

29:39 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
There's enough that it's a problem, in my opinion. Wow. So yeah, you definitely want to be aware of that policy and if you just have your heart set on that school, focus on the scholarships, the outside scholarships that pay you directly, because you don't have to claim those as a scholarship. Okay, you have to claim them on your taxes, but one of the work grounds I would say is you had a job as a freelance writer and that's how I got that money in my bank account. 

30:03 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, will the scholarship. We just did our taxes, so this is why I'm asking Will the scholarship company just mail you the paperwork you have to turn in, because I cannot see an 18-year-old boy my own son when he's 18, knowing how to do his taxes and because at that point You're not really doing taxes unless you have a job. So how do you take care of taxes with scholarships? 

30:28 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, I do want to be careful, because I'm definitely not a tax advisor, so talk to your tax or tax professional about this but, if Most scholarships, if they send the student the money directly, they will send you what is that at w2? Or got it, whatever that form is, in the mail for taxes. 

30:44 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You just turn that in, okay. 

30:45 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, if the scholarship Was sent, if the funds were sent directly to the school. I don't recall that we've ever received any kind of tax form because it's there's no tax penalty for those as far as I understand. 

30:57 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, all right, really quick. Going back to these scholarships stacking, are you? So when you were looking to apply to schools, you knew ahead of time which schools did that, and then you could pick and choose where to apply. 

31:10 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, so Most of the schools will have it somewhere on their website. Okay, some are more explicit than others. If they don't talk to the financial aid office and just ask them what the policy is, and If they him and ha, they're probably Displacing. Okay, they don't want to tell you that yes, that's such a bummer. 

31:29 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You're right, it's so much work to get these scholarships. Why would we penalize kids for doing? 

31:33 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 

31:35 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, interesting. So is your son still majoring in history? 

31:40 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Ironically no. 

31:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
He changed. 

31:43 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, he changed right as he was going off to school. 

31:45 - Katie Fenske (Host)
He's majoring in economics and okay, but that didn't change the scholarships, though he already got them. It was. 

31:52 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, thankfully it did not, but that is something to be aware of. Some scholarships are for specific majors, so you know he could have potentially lost something, some of those scholarships. Thankfully that wasn't the case. 

32:06 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, you said engineering is what he went into. Economics, economics. Okay, yeah, yeah. 

32:11 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, and it's, it's considered. There was one scholarship where there was a question and it's considered close enough. It's what's considered, like social sciences got it. So they said that was close enough. 

32:22 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, that's so cool. Oh my gosh. Yeah, all right so if parents were looking to find you or listen to your podcast, because you have a podcast, all about this. How can we find you? 

32:31 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yep, so the name of the podcast is your daily scholarship. It's on pretty much all the popular platforms. If you're not a listener and you prefer to read about scholarships, I put the same information in a daily sub stack newsletter, also called your daily scholarship. Then my website is simply no debt college calm. You can find Dave, the scholarship coach, on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, and I do have a course in membership program that's gonna be coming out Beginning of March ish still in process, but it's a way that I'm gonna be able to share a lot more information To more people than just working one-on-one. So, yeah, that's awesome. 

33:11 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I did for that, yeah like you, probably never in a million years thought this is what you'd be doing at this point in your life. 

33:16 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
But like yeah, I had no idea, you and do you ever? 

33:20 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I bet parents like text you, email you all the time like we just won this scholarship and you're like this is so awesome that you yeah, that's my favorite part Absolutely. Yeah. 

33:28 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Well, and that I'll mention one other thing that does bring up something. Scholarships are a marathon, they're not a sprint, and even if you only applied for one scholarship and you won, there is still a lag from the effort you put into that reward. So you need to help your kid build some resilience and learning. You know we don't have to be instantly gratified. This is something. We're putting money in the bank, basically yeah, depositing stuff here I do like that you mentioned. 

33:55 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Like even apply for those big ones if you don't get them. It's still teaching you how to go through the process because absolutely pretty sure your kids Are. Like what percentage? If you apply to a hundred of these scholarships, what percentage do you actually get? 

34:10 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah. So for the scholarships he applied for in high school, my son ended up with about a 20% win rate, which is actually still pretty high. Now in college, he I should say he you can keep applying for scholarships in college. Yeah, yep, so he has, and he is. He's probably not a hundred percent, but it's really close because he only he doesn't need a ton of money at this point, so he's only applying for scholarships that he is pretty confident he can do well in okay. 

34:34 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Is it harder to get a scholarship as a college student? 

34:38 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
There are definitely not as many opportunities like. It is definitely a bell curve, with the peak of the bell being senior year. But there you know, if you're, if you have a college student who's looking for money, this is a great avenue to explore You're probably not gonna find those 20 or $50,000 scholarships. But if you're Happy with a few thousand dollars here and there, I think it all adds up and you know it's less money that they're gonna have to repay, or you know work for or whatever. 

35:06 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, and I love this other thing in a soap. 

35:09 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. And the other thing about scholarships is that it's a great resume enhancer, especially when it relates to your major. So, yeah, it's, there's a lot of extra benefits and yeah not only the money right. Yeah. 

35:21 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, that's awesome. Well, you have like totally filled my, my brain with lots of ideas and I I'm gonna go and tell my husband like we can put them through college, yeah. 

35:31 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, well, I'm gonna email you a link to a scholarship that at least your two older ones could probably apply for this year. 

35:38 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, that's so cool. That is so cool. I'm sure they're like what college? 

35:42 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yes. 

35:43 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yes, well, thank you so much for coming on. This was really really interesting. 

35:48 - Dave Peterson (Guest)
Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to it and really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. 

35:53 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, those of you who have middle school, high school age students, look up Dave. This information, I think, got every parent needs to know this, and if your child is thinking about going to college, what a great way to fund your college through these amazing scholarships that Dave is talking about. So take a look at the show notes. I Was very honored that he came on the podcast and could give us all this information Now, until next week's conversation. I want to remind you that everyone burns their first pancake, so just keep flipping.