Grade 12 scholarship deadlines run from September to June, and the biggest awards close first, in October and November. This is what closes when.
Before September, build your application kit
Almost every application in the year ahead asks for the same five things. Assemble them once, in August or the first week of September, and each later application gets much shorter.
- An activity list. Every club, job, team, volunteer role and project, with dates, hours and what you did in it. Go back to Grade 10. You will not remember this in April.
- Your transcript and current average. Know your number before an application asks for it.
- Two referees who have said yes. Not "people who would probably say yes". The reference letter template is the exact message to send them.
- One 500-word personal essay about something real that happened to you, written to be re-aimed rather than reused verbatim.
- A list of the awards you are eligible for. Build my combo makes one in about a minute, and the deadline calendar shows you what is coming month by month.
September and October, when the big national awards open
The most valuable scholarships in Canada close earliest. The Loran Award (roughly $150,000 over four years) opens September 9 and closes October 15, and it needs a real application with essays, references, and activities going back years. If you are reading this in September of Grade 12, start Loran this week.
It is not the only thing in the window. The Advancing Futures Bursary for students who have been in government care is one of the largest single awards on this site, and closes February 1. The RBC Ignite Scholarship closes at the start of October, the ATCO Indigenous Education merit award the day after, and three more (the Keyera Peter J. Renton Memorial, the Anna & John Kolesar Memorial and the Tiessen Foundation broadcast award) all land on October 31. September itself closes on the Charmaine Letourneau Scholarship and the UFCW Canada Begg's-Dowling-Mathieu Scholarship, which is open to union members' families.
- Ask two teachers for reference letters now, before the November crush. Our reference letter guide covers exactly how.
- Write one strong personal essay you can adapt. See how to write a scholarship essay.
- Put every October date in your phone the day you find it, not the week it is due.
November and December, for community leadership and identity-based awards
Awards like the Wolf Scholars Program (fully funded, early November) close in this window. They ask about years of volunteering, which you cannot assemble in the last week.
November 1 is also the densest single day of the fall for Alberta students. The First Nations, Métis and Inuit Bursary, the Cenovus Energy Indigenous Scholarship, Indspire's Building Brighter Futures and the ATB Financial Bursary all close on it. If more than one of those applies to you, work backwards from November 1 in October, not in the last weekend.
December is quieter and useful for it. The University of Lethbridge Board of Governors Award and the Canadian Natural Resources Scholarship both sit mid-month, and the holidays are the last long block of time you get before the spring. If your application is thin on sustained involvement, December is also the last month where starting something can still be called sustained by the spring local awards.
January and February, for institutional and nominated awards
University entrance scholarships mostly assess you automatically when you apply for admission, but the big named ones have winter internal deadlines. Schulich Leader Scholarships ($100,000, school nomination required) closes in late January, and the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award ($28,000) closes at the start of February. There are two things to do.
- Ask your guidance counsellor which awards your school can nominate students for, and when the internal deadline is. Internal deadlines are always earlier than published ones. For a nominated award like Schulich, the date that matters to you may be six weeks before the one published on the award's own site.
- Apply for admission early. Some entrance awards only consider students admitted by a cutoff date.
February 1 is the winter's version of November 1. The Alberta Masonic Higher Education Bursary and the Kin Canada Bursary both close on it. The first local deadlines also appear in February.
March to May, for local awards
Spring is when city bursaries, service clubs, community foundations, and employer awards all close. Individually they are smaller, often $500 to $1,000, and each is open to one town, school or employer instead of the whole country. The Lethbridge County Community Benefit Scholarship and the South Country Co-op scholarship are both in this window.
This is also the densest part of the year by volume (more awards close in May than in any other month) and by May you may already have an acceptance letter, so it is easy to stop looking. Keep going. Browse the directory filtered to your region, or go straight to your own city's page from the Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Red Deer hubs, and read the local awards guide.
June and beyond, the Rutherford
After graduation, one more application is waiting, the Alexander Rutherford Scholarship, worth up to $2,500 for your high school marks alone. You apply once you are enrolled in post-secondary. There is no essay and no competition.
How many should you apply to?
Somewhere between eight and fifteen real applications across the year, weighted toward local awards open to your town or school.
Loran draws thousands of applicants for a few dozen awards, while a local award is open to one town's graduates. Apply to Loran if you meet its bar, and put most of the year into the local ones, which reuse the kit you built in September.
If you are reading this in March
Then the fall awards have closed, and most of the year's deadlines are still ahead.
- Go to the deadline calendar and read only the next two months.
- Pick every local and regional award you are eligible for. Do not filter by size yet.
- Write the one essay. Re-aim it for each award rather than rewriting it.
- Ask for references this week. Three weeks' notice is the minimum, and spring is busy for teachers.
- Book the Rutherford reminder for your first month of post-secondary, and stop worrying about the awards that closed in October.
The year at a glance
Big national awards in fall, nominations in winter, local awards in spring, Rutherford after graduation. Save the scholarships you plan to apply for and turn on deadline reminders so none of them pass silently.