Are Scholarships Real?

I see things like "financial aid package could contain a variety of scholarships, grants, work study, or loans", but it always feels like a "you have won up to ..." scam to market loans. I've never known people to get any notable scholarships or grants. Do they exist in any practical sense, or are they just the bait to get you to put in a loan application?

I'm not counting things like a $500 scholarship obtained after 80 hours of effort. One would be far better off just working minimum wage.

Consider the case of an ordinary non-special student, not even a bad one, just an ordinary student. They might not be well off, but their family doesn't qualify for things like WIC and reduced-price school lunches. They are an able-bodied straight white male. They have a GPA that is perhaps in the 2.7 to 3.7 range, or perhaps a class rank or SAT score that is in the 45th to 90th percentile. They aren't amazing at any sport or musical instrument.

If you know somebody like that who did in fact get a significant scholarship, how lucky do you think they were? Were they the one-of-a-kind miracle, kind of like a lottery winner, or is there some reason to believe that scholarships are not primarily fantasy?