Did you say... Scholarships?

Hello Students,

So we are thinking about college, and applying for schools and filling out the FAFSA for financial aid. This is good, as paying for college is obviously important!  Do not think though that your financial support stops with the FAFSA.  There are a variety of options students can pursue such as scholarships and grants.

This post will discuss the difference between scholarships and grants, and will help you students to research scholarship opportunities!

Scholarships vs Grants:  What is the difference?

While both scholarships and grants are considered "free money" for students- that is, they do not need to be re-paid- they do differer in how they are handed out to students.

Scholarships typically have specific requirements for students who are applying for them, such as GPA requirements, extra-curricular activity requirements, and can be based on gender or major of the students. 

*It is also important to note, that these requirements sometimes are need to be met even AFTER students have won the scholarship!*

Scholarship Opportunities

Awards in Scholarships are typically used for paying for college, unlike Grants.  So this applies to you readers, as you are all interested in or considering college!

The colleges you are attending will hand out their own scholarships to their students, but there are other opportunities available for students to take advantage of.  Online sites, such as scholarships.com fastweb.com, and collegescholarships.org, offer students scholarship search engines that will help facilitate students to finding the right scholarship for them.  These sites ask of their students to create a profile and they will be updated on scholarship opportunities based on students' profile information

BEWARE!  IF SCHOLARSHIP SITES ASK YOU FOR MONEY FOR THEIR SERVICES IT IS PROBABLY A SCAM!

Here is a very informational site on how to protect yourself from potential scholarship scams.

Hopefully this post shed a little more light on the mystery of scholarships, and how to apply for them.  I personally did not have the experience of using the above listed sites for scholarship opportunities, mostly because I was not aware of the options!  Don't waste the opportunity yourself!

I would personally recommend using collegescholarships.org, as it does NOT require students to have an online profile, it is a non-profit organization, and it is run but a collection of educational experts that offers assistance non only with scholarships, but with other areas of concern when it comes to college.

Thanks for the read students, and check out the next post about another form of Financial Aid for college, Grants!