My mind has always been occupied by 3 subjects: Programming, Money, and Physics. Only by combining them did I have success in all three.
Should You Pursue A Scholarship As A Developer At All?
With all the application forms and competitions, it’s easy to wonder if it’s worth the effort.
It’s unquestionably a lot of work!
Here are some benefits and drawbacks of pursuing scholarships which would answer if you should go after them!
BENEFITS
- Having some spending money as a teenager is always amazing!
- Winning a scholarship, no matter the amount, is an achievement. It validates your hard work, skills, and potential
- You can proudly add winning a scholarship to your resume or portfolio
- Even if you don’t get a scholarship the project you develop doesn’t have to gather dust! You can use it for different competitions and make it into a product or even sell it! ### DRAWBACKS Scholarships are often highly competitive, especially those with larger payouts The scholarship process and developing the project can add a lot of pressure and stress to your life Sadly, people tend to get very jealous. Don’t expect everyone to be happy for your success, but-
Don’t let the noise of others’ jealousy drown out your own success
The benefits outweighed the drawbacks for me!
I think even if the drawbacks outweigh the benefits for you, this article may change your opinion. Only one way to find out! 😄
How I Made $2000 💸
I was still 15 when someone brought to my attention a competition. A yearly “olympiad” organized by the Ministry of Education in my home country, Bulgaria. If you are interested in the specifics of the competition I’ll write another article about this topic going in depth.
So I got to work creating what I now call “My First Big Project”!
In that competition, I placed 2nd in the whole country. That qualified me to get a $900 scholarship, and with it, I got many rewards from the competition’s sponsors as well. I’ve estimated the price of these rewards to be around $100.
That all totals to $1000 though. Well The year after that, I created “My Second Big Project” and won second place again! I qualified for the same $900 scholarship, and there were some different rewards, but it all totaled around $1000 as well.
That’s why now I can say that I have made a little over $2000 in my early developer journey!
Overview Of My Projects 👨💻
My first project was a website that was a physics educational platform about gravity for students between the ages of 8 and 14.
The tech stack was simple. I used Javascript, HTML, CSS, and the p5js library to do the vector math and shape drawing.
It might look basic, but there are no direct tutorials on how to do these things! There were physics and mathematics involved, not only programming. That’s why this project was looked at as so valuable! It’s new, it’s different, it’s thought out and it’s useful, that’s why it brought me success!
My second project aimed to help scientists gather useful and accurate data through physics simulations of black holes.
I made the application using Unity. It was coded in C# and had an external application coded in Python.
If you want more information about the projects and my story on developing them, I’ll write follow-up articles about them and another post that will show you how to create exactly what I have done — award-winning academic projects. Be sure to let me know in the comments if you are interested!
How To Find High School Scholarships As A Developer 💸👀
Depending on where you live scholarships are different but they usually have the same type of requirements. They require you to have some sort of academic success.
To find scholarships in your country, you can type in a browser:
“IT scholarships in {your country} for high school students”
There should be a website that lists multiple scholarships. There you’ll see what the requirements are as well as the registration procedure for the scholarship you choose.
Alternatively, you can search for international scholarships, but the competition there is quite more substantial because you are not only competing with people from your country but also with people from other countries. It’s not a bad idea to look at the opportunities though! You can search for:
“International IT scholarships for high school students in {your country}”
Usually for more developed countries organizations will award greater sums of money per scholarship, but the competition will also increase proportionally.
Was It Worth It?
In my case yes.
I only speak from the experience I had with the scholarship that I chose, but there are many different scholarships out there!
I had to work every day for 6 months on each of those projects. Every day after school I would go back home only to write code for 5-8 hours.
What I did was not healthy! It was hard and it was very time-consuming, but there was simply no other way! This was one of the very few viable options for a 16-year-old developer like me to make this kind of money!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining! No one pushed me to do this, I created these projects because I wanted to and because I liked it! I had always wondered what it was like to build such projects and I finally got some insight into the world of software and web development!
You can see some big improvements from the first project, so that’s another bonus!
The truth is that your dreams won’t materialize if you don’t put in hard work and many hours into them! I am very glad I learned this when I was still 15 years old, but it’s never too late to learn!
So in some sense, it was definitely worth it!
Why Do People Give Away “Free Money”?
1: There’s no such thing as free money!
2: If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the one being sold.
There is no rule #3, I hope you like the article so far😄
People have different motives for creating scholarships. Believe me, it’s not because they are really keen on giving you money!
In my case, I got “free money” because by giving me this money the country hopes I’ll stay, later on becoming a well-rounded developer in return making the country better.
There are other reasons of course. If a private company is giving scholarships it might be because they are scanning for possible bright sparks among the crowds of people typing in the ChatGPT prompt “Make me a website”. Usually, they are more likely to give higher sums of money, so that you are more likely to end up working for them in the future.
Conclusion
Scholarships take time and dedication because people simply don’t give out money to everyone!
Scholarships are hard to acquire but you should have learned if pursuing one is the right choice for you.
If you want to learn what being a developer is like, you should start and finish a big project! The only way you can do that is if this project has meaning to you!
People are willing to invest in your future because in return they can make their money back tenfold!
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