Scholarship Search Tips

Posted on January 14, 2014 at 6:00 am

by Julianne T.

So you are on the downhill slide into your senior year of high school, and you have begun the application process to apply to colleges. Now the next step is to find some assistance with the cost of attending that four-year or two-year institution. Here are some tips to help you keep your scholarship search productive and organized.

Scholarship search tips

  • Sort all scholarship offerings by your interest.
  • Contact the school or organization directly – check their website.
  • Do keyword searches on a search engine. For example, if you are a female looking to go to nursing school, type in the search engine exactly that: scholarships for females for nursing school.
  • Contact the colleges you are applying to and view scholarship opportunities offered by each college.

After you have identified a list of scholarships that match your individual situation, make a spreadsheet of the scholarships you qualify for by listing the following:

  • the name of the scholarship
  • organization/company offering scholarship
  • amount of scholarship award
  • date the scholarship application needs to be filed
  • whether an essay is required and what the topic is

After you have identified scholarships you want to apply for, organize your list by the date the scholarship applications have to be filed. Identify what topics for any essays that are being requested. Find out if the topics are similar for the essays, then write one essay and tweek it for all of the listed scholarships. That will alleviate you having to write multiple essays on the similar topics.

You can select to apply for as many scholarships as you want – it all depends on how much time and energy you want to put into the process. Searching for scholarships can be a long and arduous process, but with a little planning and a lot of organization, your scholarship search can become a successful part of your college planning.

Some websites and books you can review:
Testing and Education Reference Center Click on College Prep Tools and then Scholarship Search. Valid library card number required
scholarships.com
scholarshipamerica.org
fastweb.com
collegeboard.org
thesalliemaefund.org
varsitytutors.com scholarship contents

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