8 things I hate about scholarships

With college just 5 months ahead, my mind is totally full of college thoughts.  Getting college-ready is scary as well as a lot of mental work.  One of those mental jobs is scholarships.  Thanks to the high rate of college tuition, it takes a lot of scholarships to pay for it, too.  So far I've applied for approximately 20 scholarships, and I'm still not done.  Thankfully essay writing has never been a great trial for me, but I have found that there are frustrating things about scholarship applications.  So here are 8 things I hate about these applications:

1. Asking for my date of graduation
These scholarships clearly don't understand the concept of "homeschooler."  Seriously, I could give about 3 or 4 graduation dates.  I want the option of putting a different date beside each different subject of school.  They just don't all happen at once because I AM HOMESCHOOLED.

2. Requirements specified to schools, interests, or areas
Some scholarships are highly specified to certain fields, universities, or even cities.  So you spend hours reading through a hundred scholarship descriptions to try to find the 10 that will work for you; but by the time you get to those 10 (probably at the end of the list), you've zoned out long ago.  (Slight exaggeration.)  However, I can't complain about the Brinnon specified scholarships, which actually are pretty nice because I can count on lower competition.

3. Unclear or conflicting rules
If I misunderstand something, I could be disqualified.  I could write this whole essay without ever having a chance...but I'd never know it.  All scholarships should have painfully clear rules and then maybe a place to submit questions for the sake of clarity.

4. Unrevealed dates for announcing the winner
Who knows if the announcement date is in a week or 3 months?  So there you sit in suspense for months, never quite sure if you're going to get a call with an award.  By the time 6 months rolls around, it's probably time to stop hoping you'll be the one.

5. The word limit
The goal is probably for the judges to see how concise and impressive you can make your sentences.  When the word limit is low, just use a lot of big words and make it as eloquent sounding as possible.  I think this is the only option.  (I ran into a scholarship that even had a limit of 3 sentences.  This is where the "string theory" is useful.)

6. The word requirement
On the opposing side are those scholarships that want you to write an essay that is at least 4 pages in size 5 font.  After page one, it's time to start making stuff up and re-wording sentences just to make the word count go up.  At that point, the only goal is to put more words on the page and hope they come out making sense.  After all, as you write your essay, you start to realize that the judge probably just reads the first sentence of every paragraph.  Who has time to read an essay that long anyway?  And then the judging panel sits there over cookies and coffee, laughing at you for falling for their joke and spending hours on an essay in desperate hopes of winning the contest.

7. Scholarships with questions barely different from the last one
Although I don't mind writing essays, I have no desire to write all week just because each scholarship asks a slightly different question.  Can't there be, like, 3 uniform questions to ask for all scholarships?  It would be so much easier to write one essay and use it for several applications than to attempt to painstakingly readjust my writing to fit the next thing.

8. The question "why are you applying for this scholarship?"
And then they put a requirement of 500 words on it.  You use the same 3 words over and over until there is a paragraph of 500 words: "I NEED MONEY."  And you could also throw in the occasional "I am poor" or "College is expensive" if you want more variety for your essay.  WHY does this question even exist?  I'm just not quite sure how to be creative when it comes to this.