Finding Balance in Grade 12: Paige's Success Story

With a school, sports, volunteering, and a part-time job, Paige had no time for scholarships. Here's how she found balance and won over $80,000 in scholarships.

Written by Adam Griffiths and Paige Ingram

There is no doubt that the beginning of my Grade 12 year was an incredibly exciting and busy time. Rushing from back-to-back cross-country races and volleyball games. Balancing my volunteer work as a mental health advocate with my job as an academic tutor. Organizing fundraisers at my high school as part of the club I was leading. And on top of this, I was supposed to leave time for school?! The hours just didn’t add up. 

This left little—if any—time for me to devote to my goal of winning scholarships. 

I remained determined despite this. I attended several university information sessions to try and extract bits of information about scholarship opportunities. However, these sessions were very generic, covering multiple universities and all faculties. 

There was no clear direction.  

As I dove deeper into the scholarship pursuit, I also found it overwhelming to tailor my multiple applications to meet all the different scholarship formats. Instead, I wished I could just submit my resume to all the scholarship committees and be done with it! 

During my scholarship research, I came across GrantMe’s program and was attracted by the success of their past scholars. Within a few days, I joined the program and I breathed a sigh of relief. This relief did not come from a lessened workload—definitely not!

Rather, GrantMe gave me a sense of direction in how to approach the daunting scholarship and university application process. 

GrantMe taught me which scholarships to prioritize and how to illustrate my activities and achievements in a meaningful way. Instead of listing every single extra-curricular activity, they taught me to expand on a few roles most relevant to a particular scholarship and clearly outline the impact I had made. 

It was so nice to no longer feel isolated when navigating the complicated scholarship applications process. 

Instead, I joined Mentorship Webinars and Office Hour calls with other students going through the process, which provided a great opportunity for us to learn from each other. 

An unexpected benefit of my time at GrantMe was self-reflection. 

The program forced me to take a long hard look at why I was doing the things I was doing. I had to ask myself: what did I want to continue with? What was important to me? What were my values?  

Taking a prolonged look at these things both further solidified my career path decisions as well as increased my focus on being a mental health advocate. I also learned the importance of life balance, especially amidst the many demands of my Grade 12 year.   

As for my career path, I am now more confident than ever about what I hope to do. 

I am interested in applying IT solutions to not only make organizations more efficient, responsive, and innovative, but also to make a positive social impact. To pursue this goal, I am excited to join the Business & Computer Science (BUCS) program at the UBC Sauder School of Business in September 2020.

I won a UBC Presidential Scholar’s Major Entrance Award of $80,000 as well as other smaller scholarships.  

Completing the GrantMe program, I gained meaningful self-reflection and personal growth.

I am going to be frank: there is no “secret” to scholarship success. It is a ton of work. It requires a great amount of passion, commitment, and perseverance.

GrantMe helped channel my energy to focus in the right areas in order to maximize my chance of success. 

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Paige Ingram is a 2020 GrantMe Academy program alumnus and a current GrantMe Mentor.

If you want to achieve success like Paige, GrantMe can help. We provide personalized scholarship matches, essay editing, and mentorship from past winners to maximize your success. Complete our short scholarship eligibility quiz to learn more about how GrantMe can help you achieve your post-secondary goals.