My mom and I began with ZERO knowledge pertaining to scholarships, and we didn't even know anyone who had won a scholarship.
I vividly remember before my 11th grade year started, my parents sitting me down for a conversation.
"Ryan, we know you want to go to college, but we don't have any extra savings for it and we don't expect to get money from FAFSA. So, the only way you pull this off is if you earn scholarships..."
Being a typical high school student, I wasn't that excited about scholarships and I was worried I wouldn't be eligible.
I did not have a perfect SAT or ACT score (I really struggled with standardized testing), I was not a genius (I had good grades, but I wasn’t even taking AP classes), and I was not an athlete.
But soon, my mom and I learned that I did not actually need any of these things in order to win scholarships.
My mom and I rolled up our sleeves and got started finding and applying for awards.
We experienced a lot of trial and error in the beginning as I received rejections, but we kept pressing forward, knowing there had to be a better way.
And one day...my mom had an epiphany that changed everything.
She realized that we had only been applying to huge, competitive scholarships found on large online databases. I was competing against tens of thousands of students. No wonder I wasn't winning!
We drilled in our scholarship strategy and developed what I now call the "Get Paid to Go to College" winning-scholarship system.
We shifted our focus to smaller, less-competitive, niche, and localized opportunities. Suddenly, I was only competing against 5-10 students at a time.
We figured out how to write reusable application answers and essays so I could simply copy and paste onto applications, rather than spend countless hours writing multiple essays.
We even developed a winning essay format that helped me write essays easily, even though I was not that strong of a writer.
And I started winning...A LOT.