It hardly seems fair, but high school seniors who have just run the college application gauntlet must now prepare for a new round of applications: scholarship applications.
For some scholarships, it’s already too late – some scholarships require that students apply as high school juniors or during the first half of senior year. But most scholarship deadlines are just around the corner. The time to apply is now.
Before you rush off to start searching for scholarships, let’s review standard financial aid procedures. (Check out our Top 10 Financial Aid Tips!)
How Financial Aid Works
You complete your FAFSA (which you should do even if you think you won’t qualify for aid – each year, hundreds of thousands of students miss out on Pell Grants and other aid because they incorrectly believed that they wouldn’t qualify). You complete your CSS/Financial Aid Profile and any school-specific forms. You sit back and wait.
All of this data is used to calculate your Expected Family Contribution (EFC). Schools use your EFC to calculate your “demonstrated need” – how much money you need to afford their cost of attendance. So cost of attendance – EFC = demonstrated need.
The school will then cobble together a financial aid package to try to meet your demonstrated need. They will use some combination of federal and state financial aid (including grants, work-study, and loans) and need-based grants from the school.
If all of this aid doesn’t meet the amount of your demonstrated need, you have what’s called “unmet need”. You and your family are responsible for paying that unmet need in addition to the EFC.
Wouldn’t it be nice if colleges would allow you to use scholarships to meet that unmet need? Many colleges will apply outside scholarships to unmet need first, and then reduce any financial aid, but many others will simply use your outside scholarship money to reduce the grants and other aid that you otherwise would have been offered.
That makes applying for scholarships seem like a waste of time, right?
What You Can Do
There are several steps you can take to ensure that your outside scholarships benefit you instead of the school.
First, request a copy of your school’s scholarship policy. If your school already uses outside scholarships to reduce unmet need, you can stop here. You’re golden.
Second, contact your financial aid officer. Ask if it is possible for the school to apply your scholarship money to your unmet need. Be very nice, very polite, and very understanding. A financial aid officer can be an excellent ally.
Third, if your financial aid officer simply cannot apply the scholarship money to your unmet need, request that the money be used to reduce loans before grants or other aid. Loans must be paid back – plus interest. Scholarships don’t.
Fourth, if all else fails, contact the scholarship sponsor to see if you can defer all or part of your scholarship to a future academic year.
Whatever you do, DO NOT be tempted to hide your scholarship award. Federal law REQUIRES that you report all scholarship money. If you’re caught, you may be forced to repay the school or the federal government!
Finding Scholarships: Free Money for College
You know what you need to do to make sure your scholarship money works to your advantage, so now let’s go find some free money.
Scholarship Search Tools
The best place to begin is with a few search tools. There are tons of scholarship search engines out there, but you should try to stick with the more mainstream, well known ones. (There are a lot of scholarship scams around – check out this post for more information!)
Sallie Mae Scholarship Search
Scholarships.com
Fastweb.com
Big Future by The College Board
These search engines will help you narrow down the hundreds of thousands of scholarships out there to focus on the ones that you might actually qualify for. Pay close attention to all requirements! Most scholarships are only available to select groups of students.
Our Picks – Some Awesome, Some Strange
There is quite literally a scholarship for everyone. There are scholarships for bagpipe players, left handed students, and vegetarians. There are scholarships for specific majors, interests, ethnic or cultural groups. I’m sure that if you search hard enough, you could find a scholarship for people with blue eyes.
We’ve sifted through a lot of scholarships to pick some of our favorites. Don’t limit yourself to our list, though!
F. Armstrong Scholarship: Available to students at Cornell University who contribute to Cornell’s cultural diversity. Such applicants might be ethnic minorities, international students, or first generation Americans. Award: $12,500
Engineering for You Video Contest: Submit a 1 to 2 minute video showing engineering contributions that serve society. Grand Prize: $25,000
Common Knowledge Scholarships: High school students AND their parents can compete. Competitions consist of quizzes on varied topics. Students/parents with the highest scores at the end of each competition win. Award: $250 to $2,500
“Three Sentence Essay” Scholarship: Scholarship is awarded every week. Winners are chosen based on a 2-3 sentence response to the week’s essay question. Award: $1,000
$2,000 No Essay Scholarship: Monthly winners are chosen by random drawing. Award: $2,000
American Legion Oratorical Contest: Students present 8-10 minute speeches about the U.S. Constitution, and 3-5 minute speeches on assigned topics. Students compete at local, state, and national levels. National Prize: $18,000