Private Scholarships: How and Where to Search!
First, check with your
college(s) to see how they treat scholarships.
Per the Federal rules, outside scholarships are treated as resources and
are added to your EFC, lowering the financial aid offered. In some cases, it may lower the loans the
school included in your award in order to cover a gap between federal aid, state
aid, institutional aid, your contribution and the total cost of attendance
(COA). In other cases, they will lower
their institutional scholarships and grants, which is certainly not helpful to
you (and makes the effort to procure private scholarship dollars unproductive).
Second, the student should
interview the family and relatives about where they are from, all the family
names (maiden names), interesting characteristics – redheads and lefties noted!
- and organizations they have or were ever involved with. Armed with that list of information, it’s
time to start the search.
Before you start, be prepared to
be methodical, and to create notes and files by month. Some scholarships can be applied for annually
throughout college while others only apply to freshman year or senior year,
etc. Some will apply for certain majors
but not others so take note, if the covered major is an interest and you are
not firmly decided upon your course of studies.
Remember NEVER PAY FOR SCHOLARSHIPS!
Those are SCAMS.
Lastly, keep in mind that the
best scholarships come directly from your college or university. Search by university, college, department,
and major. Search by club and
organization. Search for corporate and
alumni sponsored scholarships. Fully 18%
of all financial aid monies are institutional scholarships. Private scholarships are only 1.5% of all
financial aid. Now that you are ready,
here are a few places to search:
Big Future (by the College
Board) http://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/scholarships-grants
Merit Aid: http://www.meritaid.org
Scholarships: http://www.scholarshipexperts.com/
Student Scholarships: http://www.studentscholarships.org
School Soup: http://www.schoolsoup.com
Zinch: http://www.zinch.com/
Pro Scholar: http://www.proscholar.com/
College Treasure: http://collegetreasure.com/index.php