A national scholarship is open to every Grade 12 student in Canada. A $1,000 award from a Medicine Hat service club is open to the graduates of a few schools. If the goal is money for school, apply to the second kind as seriously as the first.
How many people apply
Few providers publish it. Three in this directory do. In 2026 the Redcliff Scholarships for Advanced Education committee read eleven applications for three awards. The Edmonton Refugee and Emerging Communities Awards give out about 40 a year against roughly 64 eligible applications. The Merck Canada Indigenous Student Scholarship stops taking applications at 60, for up to eight awards. All three are open to a narrow group, and that is what keeps the counts small.
A local award also takes less time to apply for, and the same essay and reference letter usually work for several of them. Apply to the big national ones too if you meet their criteria.
What local committees look at
- They know your context. A national reader does not know your school or what it means to hold a job in a small town. A local committee does, and often knows your referee personally.
- They draw from fewer people. An award for one town's graduates is open to a much smaller group than a provincial or national one.
- They value ordinary evidence. Local committees know what a part-time job, farm work, coaching or volunteering takes in your town.
Where to find them
Local awards are hard to find. They live on photocopied sheets in guidance offices and outdated municipal webpages, which is the problem ScholarAB exists to fix. These are the usual sources.
- Your guidance office. Ask for the local awards list directly, because some awards are only distributed through schools.
- City and county programs, like Cypress County's two Agricultural Service Board bursaries or the Lethbridge County Community Benefit Scholarship.
- Service clubs such as Rotary, Lions, Elks, Legion branches and their auxiliaries. The Kin Canada Bursary, endorsed by your nearest Kin club, is typical of the shape.
- Community foundations that administer dozens of small named funds through a single application. Check that the one near you funds students, though. Plenty of them, including the Community Foundation of Southeastern Alberta, give only to charities.
- Employers and unions, both yours and your parents'. Co-op and credit-union memberships often carry student awards. South Country Co-op and the ATA Local 21 Scholarship are two you can look at right now.
In the directory, the Where you live filter narrows the list to your area. Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Red Deer have their own pages, and so do national awards. Build my combo sorts them by how well they fit your answers.
What to apply to
Apply to the Rutherford because it is guaranteed money for marks you already have. Apply to every local award you plausibly qualify for, reusing one strong essay and one reference package. Add national awards on top where you meet the criteria. Small awards stack, and $1,000 three times is a semester's tuition.