To further one’s education after high school seems to always appear to be a parent’s largest concern. However, financial circumstances can highly influence whether or not college will be a possibility. Luckily, scholarships appear to be just about everywhere and can be fairly simple to receive. Many of these scholarships can be earned by simply writing an essay, or earned based on other merits. Many would define the word scholarship as an award of financial aid toward a student to further his or her education earned through acts of outstanding academic and/or extracurricular activities. A scholarship provides the means to pay for the cost of furthering one’s education. A student that receives superb grades throughout their high school career, and that participates in vast amounts of extracurricular activities should be able to receive reward in the form of a merit-based scholarship. Dictionary.com defines merit as “something that deserves or justifies a reward or commendation; a commendable quality, act, etc.” (n.p.). Therefore, these merit-based scholarships are rewarded to students who achieve academic excellence. By identifying good students and providing them with merit-based scholarships, schools will encourage those good students to continue to do well and hopefully inspire other students to strive to work hard to be able to qualify for these merit-based scholarships. Colleges should provide merit-based scholarships to ensure student’s hard work is rewarded and others have a goal to be encouraged by.…