Parents frequently say it’s time to get serious about applying for college scholarships. But for some scholarships, being serious is the last thing you should do — because some scholarships reward you for being funny.
Is there as much money available for telling jokes as for writing essays? Well, no. But for class clowns and aspiring comedians, these scholarships offer the chance to use humor to help pay for college.
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Portland-based Unigo.com works to match students with colleges and has awarded nearly $500,000 in scholarships. One of those is the Make Me Laugh Scholarship, which grants $1,500 to the applicant who inspires the heartiest guffaws with a 250 – or – fewer – word story.
The story must describe an incident in the applicant’s life — funny or embarrassing, fact or fiction. The key is to make the scholarship committee laugh. Applicants must be 13 years or older, legal U.S. residents and currently enrolled or enrolling in college no later than fall 2023.
According to the scholarship site, the committee doesn’t “want to know why you deserve $1,500 or how great your grades are, we simply want to LOL.” If you need inspiration, Unigo.com posts previous winning stories. Applications are due Aug. 31 .
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Another scholarship that rewards students for their humor is the $1,500 Parry & Pfau Left-Handed Scholarship. Although offered by a Las Vegas law firm that promotes the cause of left-handedness, this scholarship is open to to right-handed, left-handed and ambidextrous U.S. high school seniors and college undergraduate and graduate students.
Applicants must submit a one- to two-minute video via YouTube addressing why it is better to be left-handed than right-handed . Applicants are asked to be humorous and creative in their approach and to not take the video prompt too seriously. They will also be judged on these criteria and not on financial need. The application deadline is July 31.
While the previous two scholarships don’t specify an institution where recipients must use the award, some universities also reward students’ comedic skills.
The Don and Alleen Nilsen Humor Scholarship Award is open to current Arizona State University–Tempe students who have declared a major in English or Film and Media Studies at the Tempe campus or ASU Online in the English department, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences or in secondary education (English) at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.
Applicants must have a 2.5 or higher GPA, be enrolled full-time at ASU when the scholarship is distributed and have completed at least 15 hours of coursework in the English department.
Applicants should submit an online presentation that makes others laugh while also teaching them about language. Entries should be a maximum of 5 minutes long and must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. March 1. Last year, two students were awarded a total of $1,000.
[Learn how to support your study at prestigious universities with these scholarships.]
Students at the University of Portland can apply for the Brian Doyle Scholarships in Gentle & Sidelong Humor. The five scholarships, named for writer Brian Doyle and underwritten by a prominent university donor, are designed to reward students who propose ways to bring laughs to the college. Five students won $3,333 apiece for the 2016-17 academic year.
Applications should include a brief but detailed description of an idea for a humor project — a video, performance, website or more — that can be completed in the following academic year. Students should check the website for an updated scholarship deadline.
The University of California–Berkeley is known particularly for the tech fields, but not necessarily for humor. But a gift from alumnus Samuel Irving in September 1911 established the Samuel C. Irving Prize for American Wit and Humor.
This scholarship rewards a student for the best anecdote, story, poem, drawing or play illustrative of American wit and humor. UC–Berkeley undergraduates and graduates may apply for the award. The award amount varies each year, and entries are typically due in early December.
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Win a Scholarship for Being Funny originally appeared on usnews.com
