Scholarships: Freshman Year - A Strong Foundation for Future Wins

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Most students wait until senior year to apply for scholarships-then panic. Start in freshman year and you can build the grades, activities, and habits needed to confidently apply and win later.

By John Varady — December 30, 2025

Tags: scholarships

This is part 1 of a 5-part grade-by-grade series on getting scholarship-ready from freshman year of high school through college. We built the Scholarship Tracker to support this series. The Tracker helps students manage deadlines, build reusable essays, track documents, and log achievements as they follow the grade-by-grade system.

You're not applying for scholarships in 9th grade. That's not how this works. What you're doing is setting up the next three years so when scholarships open up junior and senior year, you're way ahead of the competition.

Most students wait until senior year and panic. They're scrambling to remember what clubs they joined, what they did in those clubs, how many volunteer hours they actually logged, and whether they can still get a recommendation letter from that teacher who retired last year. Don't be that student.

Use freshman year to lock in your GPA, find a few activities you actually enjoy, and start tracking when you do them. That's the entire game for now.

Why Freshman Year Actually Counts

Your GPA starts now. Scholarship applications ask for your GPA across all four years, so 9th grade counts too. Local scholarships usually want a 3.0 minimum. Bigger awards often want a 3.5 or higher. Every semester matters because the math gets harder to fix later. Start freshman year with a 2.5 and you'll need straight A's for two years just to hit a 3.0 cumulative. Start with a 3.3 and you've got room to improve without the pressure.

Your activities start now. The stuff you join in 9th grade and stick with through 12th grade? That's depth. That's what selection committees care about. Joining 8 clubs senior year to pad your resume? Committees can spot that in two seconds. They'll ask about the leadership roles you've held. If you can't remember details because you didn't log them, you're cooked.

Your good habits start now. How you handle homework, tests, and deadlines this year becomes your pattern. Good habits compound. Bad ones get harder to break.

Set Up the Scholarship Tracker Right Now

Here's what happens when you don't track things as you go: by junior year, you're trying to reconstruct what you did in that robotics club freshman year. You think you volunteered at the food pantry for 6 months but maybe it was 4? You babysat your neighbor's kids every Saturday for two summers and yet you can't remember any challenges you dealt with (and that kid was a handful!). You get years wrong. You forget names. You undercount everything by half.

The Tracker fixes this problem before it starts.

Go ahead and create a Ready Set College account if you haven't already, then navigate to the Scholarship Tracker Achievement Log. This isn't something you deal with "later when scholarships matter." Starting today, this is where you'll record every activity, job, volunteer shift, and award you receive. Update it monthly so when applications open junior year, you're not scrambling to remember everything.

Academic Habits That Actually Work

Strong grades open doors. You don't need straight A's, but you do need to show colleges and scholarship selection committees that you can handle real coursework without falling apart.

Three things matter most: show up, turn in your work, and ask for help before you're failing.

Attendance matters because catching up is 10 times harder than keeping up. Miss two days and suddenly you're behind in three classes. Miss a week and you're spending the rest of the semester trying to dig out.

Homework matters even when it's not perfect. Turn in a rough draft instead of nothing. A 70% on an assignment you actually submitted beats a zero every single time, and a goose egg can tank your grade faster than anything else.

Ask for help early. Teachers want to help you, but they ain't mindreaders. Go to office hours. Ask a classmate. Find help before you're flailing, not after. If you wait until you have a D and are way stressed out, it may already be too late.

Build a Study Routine You Can Actually Keep

Pick a time for homework every day and protect it like practice or a shift at your job. Many students do well around 4:00-5:30 p.m. or immediately after dinner. The time doesn't matter as much as establishing consistency.

Use a planner or calendar app to track assignments and test dates. Write everything down so nothing sneaks up on you. Digital calendars work. Paper planners work. Pick one and use it every day.

Work in 25-30 minute blocks with short breaks between. Your brain holds focus better in sprints than marathons. Set a timer, work hard for 25 minutes, take 5 minutes to check your phone or walk around, then go again.

Do This Now: Pick your daily homework time and set a recurring phone alarm for it. Follow it for two weeks. If it doesn't work, adjust the time but keep the routine.

Choose Classes Without Destroying Yourself

You'll hear a lot of advice about taking "the hardest classes possible" to impress colleges. Here's the truth: scholarship committees care about rigor, but if it tanks your GPA and leaves you mentally exhausted, it's clearly not worth it.

Take honors or advanced classes in subjects you're already strong in. If you're good at writing, take honors English. If math clicks for you, take the harder math. Don't take all the hard classes in subjects where you're already struggling.

Keep at least one class where you feel confident. It protects your GPA and gives you a mental break. There's no prize for suffering through six AP classes as a freshman if you end up with a 2.8 and burnout by October.

Ask yourself one question before signing up for a class: "Can I realistically get a B or better in this class and still sleep?" If the answer is no, pick a different class.

Start Activities You Might Actually Stick With

Selection committees love commitment and impact. They don't care about long lists of clubs you joined once and never went back to.

Here's what usually happens: September rolls around and you sign up for 5 clubs because they all "look good on paper". By November, you've been to robotics twice, debate once, and drama never. Your free time is gone, your grades are slipping, and you have nothing real to show for it. Scholarship committees can spot resume padding from a mile away.

Do this instead: pick some activities in a couple of different areas that genuinely interest you and commit to sticking with them for at least two months.

School-based: clubs, sports, band, theater, student government. Community-based: youth groups, rec leagues, community theater, martial arts. Service-based: food pantry, tutoring programs, animal shelters, hospital volunteering.

The goal is to try things on purpose, not collect memberships.

The Two-Month Rule

It's okay to quit an activity in freshman year if it's clearly not for you. Just do it thoughtfully.

Commit to trying any new club or sport for at least two months. After two months, ask yourself three questions: Do I look forward to this or dread it? Is this helping me grow in a way I actually care about? Is it worth the time it takes?

If the answer is no to all three, step back and try something else. Committees care way more about what you stick with from 10th through 12th grade than what you tested out briefly in 9th.

Notice What Keeps Pulling You Back

Pay attention to the activities that feel like you. Which ones would you do even if they didn't count for college applications? What do you talk about with friends without being asked? Where do you feel useful or energized instead of drained?

These are early clues to your future "passion anchor." That's the theme that ties your story together when you're writing scholarship essays later.

Start Your Achievement Log Today

The Achievement Log in your Scholarship Tracker is where you capture everything you do as you do it. Future-you (the one writing scholarship essays junior and senior year) will thank you for starting this now instead of trying to reconstruct three years of activities from memory.

For every job, club, volunteer gig, or project, log these basics:

Activity name: JV soccer, church youth group, babysitting. Your role: member, volunteer, regular babysitter. Dates: month and year you started (leave end date blank if you're still doing it). Hours: per week or per month (estimate is fine, just be honest). What you actually did: set up chairs, watched two kids under 5, posted social media updates for the club. One thing you learned: patience, time management, teamwork, how to talk to parents.

Don't worry about perfect wording or sounding impressive. This is a raw notebook that feeds your applications later. Just get it down.

At the end of each month, spend 10 minutes updating your Achievement Log. Add anything new you started. Adjust hours or roles if something changed. That's it. Since you currently have it open (you did open it, right?), go ahead and log one activity you're doing right now.

Tracker Tool Tip: Set a monthly phone reminder: "Update Scholarship Tracker." Last Sunday of every month works for most people. These quick notes turn into scholarship essay material junior year.

Think Foundations, Not Perfect Resume

It's easy to feel like everyone else has a plan, a passion, or a perfect GPA already. They don't. Freshman year is supposed to be messy while you figure things out.

Progress beats perfection. A slightly better study habit, one activity you actually like, or one month of consistent tracking is a win. You're not trying to look scholarship-ready right now. You're building the foundation so you will be ready later.

Depth comes later. Right now you're exploring. The deep commitment and leadership roles happen in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. You're allowed to try things and decide they're not for you. That's not failure - it's how you figure out what actually fits.

For Parents: How to Help Without Adding Pressure

If you're a parent reading this with your student, your job in 9th grade is structure and support, not control or endless scholarship talk.

Help your student set up the Tracker. Create the account together, walk through the Achievement Log and help them add a few entries if they can't think of any achievements to log. Make sure they understand how it works. Talk about scholarships casually - mention that they exist and are realistic without turning every quiz grade into "this affects your scholarship chances."

Help with logistics. Give your student rides to practices, volunteer shifts, and club meetings so they can actually try different activities. Protect time for sleep and homework. A reasonable bedtime and quiet homework time do more for future scholarships than cramming in one more club.

Once a month, ask "Have you updated your Tracker?" and if they haven't, help them log what they've done. Keep it short and factual. No lectures about how important this is - just help them establish the habit and move on.

The best thing you can give a 9th grader is confidence that scholarships are possible without making them feel like every day is a test.

What NOT to Do in Freshman Year

Don't waste time on scholarship sites yet. You're not eligible for most of them, and the ones that do accept freshmen are usually essay contests with 50,000 applicants. You'll burn hours with low chance of winning. Use that time on grades and activities instead.

Don't join 5 clubs and quit 3 by Halloween. It creates stress without building anything useful. Pick fewer activities and actually show up both physically and mentally.

Don't take six hard classes just to "look good." A slightly lighter course load with stronger grades and time for sleep is usually better than advanced everything and a 2.9 GPA.

Don't ignore your mental health. If school feels overwhelming, talk to a counselor, trusted teacher, or parent early. Burning out in 9th grade doesn't help your scholarship chances - it just makes everything harder.

Don't skip the Tracker. Trying to remember everything later guarantees you'll forget important details, undercount your hours, and write weaker essays because you can't recall specifics.

FAQ: Freshman Year and Scholarships

Can I win scholarships as a freshman?

A few scholarships accept 9th graders, but they're rare and usually very competitive. You're better off using this year to build strong grades and activities so you're far more competitive when scholarship season actually hits junior and senior year.

Do I need a LinkedIn profile or personal website now?

No. Freshman year is way too early. Those tools become useful in junior or senior year when you have projects, leadership roles, or work experience worth showcasing. Right now, focus on your Achievement Log and GPA.

Should I take all honors or AP classes to impress scholarship committees?

Only if you can handle them while keeping your GPA strong and getting enough sleep. It's better to take a challenging but realistic schedule and earn solid grades than overload yourself, end up exhausted, and finish with lower marks. A 3.5 in regular and honors classes beats a 2.8 in all AP classes.

What if I have no idea what I want to do after high school?

That's completely normal in 9th grade. Use this year to notice what you enjoy, which classes interest you, and which activities feel meaningful. You don't need a career plan yet. You just need to pay attention so your plans get clearer over time.

What if I already messed up first semester?

One rough semester doesn't kill your scholarship chances. The math: if you're at a 3.0 now and bring it up to a 3.4 by junior year, you're still competitive for most local scholarships. Focus on improvement - talk to teachers, fix your study habits, and aim for an upward trend. Committees respect growth just as much as perfect grades.

The Complete Scholarship Grade-by-Grade Series

A1: Scholarships: Freshman Year — Laying a Strong Foundation
A2: Scholarships: Sophomore Year — Direction and Depth
A3: Scholarships: Junior Year — Gearing Up for the Big Game
A4: Scholarships: Senior Year — Applying at Scale
A5: Scholarships: College Years — Keep the Wins Coming

Also explore: Scholarships: The Application Machine to see how the Tracker powers your entire scholarship workflow.

John Varady

Senior Developer at SAGE Scholars, John Varady brings decades of software expertise and real-world insight as a parent who recently navigated the college search with his own children. His personal and professional experiences fuel his commitment to helping families make informed, confident decisions about higher education.

View all posts by John Varady