Students at all three campuses who plan to apply this spring for a piece of the $500,000 in scholarships should begin preparing now by keeping up GPAs, performing community service, and looking for professors to write strong letters of recommendation, scholarship experts said.
Approximately $500,000 in scholarships is awarded to Ventura County Community College students each year, just in local scholarships alone. Over $300,000 is available to Ventura College students, $140,000 is available to Moorpark College students, and about $50,000 is available to Oxnard College students. These scholarships are open to almost any student in the district.
Many times these scholarships are so overlooked by students that sometimes there are more scholarships available than actual applicants, said Margaret Ramos, scholarship coordinator at Moorpark College. Ramos compared the application process to entering a sweepstakes. “If you like to be competitive, scholarships are the way to go,” she said.
The application process varies depending on the scholarship, but many of the applications ask for similar information. Most require the student to attend full-time, have around a 3.0 GPA-although others can be as low as 2.5-have a certain major/career goal, write an autobiographical essay, and submit letters of recommendation. Since most of the information requested is purely factual, the essay and the letters of recommendation are the few things that really place a personality to the application.
The scholarship programs at Moorpark , Ventura, and Oxnard also vary in operation. The Ventura College scholarship program is integrated with the Ventura College Foundation, which collects donations and organizes fundraisers that provide money for scholarships for students, grants to staff, and funds for special college projects. The applicant only needs to fill out one application each year and they are automatically considered for all Foundation scholarships for which they are eligible.
The Oxnard College scholarship program currently operates as an annual publication called the Oxnard College Scholarship Directory which consists of scholarships offered through Oxnard College that utilize the Oxnard College General Scholarship Application and outside donors who utilize their own application and process. The benefit of applying through the Scholarship Directory is that the application only needs to be completed once a year to be considered for all Oxnard College scholarships.
At Moorpark, Ramos and the Scholarship Office coordinate scholarships from the Moorpark College Foundation and scholarships offered by community organizations to match students with specific scholarships that will suit them best.
The biggest months for scholarship offerings are February, March, and April for undergraduates attending community college in the fall or upper-division students transferring to a four-year university. It’s important to truly express your future dreams and ambitions in the applications. “Donors want to award scholarships to a student with focus on their plans and a passion for what they do,” Ramos said.
