Tag: Scholarships

When it comes to college scholarships, the more that you can accumulate the better off you will be. You cannot always rely on college financial aid to be enough to get you through college. After all, financial aid is based on your parents’ salary and their assets, not your own. Therefore, if your parents are not willing or able to help as much as their financial aid sheet says they can, then you may have problems and be in need of college admissions assistance to find a way to afford your tuition. The good news is there are several ways that you can seek out college scholarship help.

Utilize a college financial aid calculator
The first thing you are going to want to do is head online and look for a college financial aid calculator. Although the tuition charged may change from school to school, you will have a rough idea of where you stand on what you will owe if you use a certified calculator. This gives you an estimate of how much you will be left owing after student loans so that you can figure out the amount of scholarships you will need to cover tuition. Keep in mind that scholarships can be applied before financial aid if they are sent directly to the school, so this is another factor to remember while shopping for useful scholarships.

Check out your high school guidance office
The second thing you need to do is make an appointment with your high school guidance office so that you can sit down with your counselor and go over your scholarship options. They are the best window into your local scholarship opportunities.They will know what you are eligible for and, since they have spent years helping other students, they know what you are likely to get. This will help save you a lot of wasted time.

Seek out college admissions assistance
Another great office to schedule an appointment with is the college admissions assistance office. Their assistance is also invaluable because they have experience helping freshmen every year. They can help guide you through the scholarships available in your college town so you can afford your education. They can also help you see if you qualify for anything directly from the school, because many times schools offer grants and these can be helpful to put towards your tuition.

Online scholarship help
Finally, the last thing you might want to think about doing is heading online to look for scholarships. There are actually many websites designed to offer college scholarship help to college freshmen. Online searches can reap a lot of rewards because you can apply for dozens of scholarships with just one click of a button, making it a very time efficient way to apply for help.

Let’s get real. Post-secondary education is expensive and very few people have thousands of dollars casually lying around the house. Most of us are in search of cash — the type that you don’t have to pay back. In other words, we’re all searching for those illustrious scholarships. If you’re new at this whole “applying-for-scholarships-because-I-need-money-to-pay-for-school-which-suddenly-isn’t-free-anymore” thing, then you’ve come to the right place.

Here are seven helpful tips that could help you score some extra cash!

1. You do not get scholarships for simply existing. Almost every scholarship application that you come across is going to inquire about your extracurricular activities and community involvement. You need to do something, be a part of something, or participate in something. You don’t necessarily need to be the three-time reigning champion of every competition you compete in, or the newly-elected President for every fancy club that you’re a part of. You simply need to get out there and participate.

2. One of the hardest parts of getting free money is finding free money. Luckily, there are people who dedicate themselves to doing it for you! Make sure to check out websites like Scholarship Canada. They have information on hundreds of scholarships— both large and small. Also, take a glance at your school’s website. The majority of Guidance Councillors will actually post a list of scholarships that they’ve come across. But don’t stop there. Go the extra mile and go digging through the websites of other schools. You’re guaranteed to come across a fresh new list filled with new opportunities.

3. Keep your eye out for obscure scholarships offered by smaller organizations. This may require an advanced Google search and some serious digging but this very well might be the key to your first scholarship. Most students set their targets on big scholarships offered by well-known companies. There’s no harm in applying for those, but your chances quickly diminish when you’re facing so much competition. However, with the lesser-known scholarships that might be sitting on page 17 of a Google search, your chances of standing out in the significantly smaller crowd are far higher.

4. Your best bet to scoring a scholarship is to apply to as many as possible. This may sound frighteningly obvious but you would be surprised by how many people lay all of their eggs in one basket. Yes, it’s time-consuming and painstakingly tedious but you need to apply, apply, and apply some more!

5. If a scholarship application sounds too long, too boring, or too overwhelming, there’s a pretty good chance that other students are going to think the same thing and avoid it all together. This, of course, means that you should go ahead and do it! The more tedious the application is, the less competition you’re going to have. So suck it up and get writing!

6. Never lie. Don’t lie about your qualifications, achievements, activities, awards, or anything of the sort. Just don’t! If you get caught, you’ll suffer from third-degree embarrassment and, even worse, you may sever some really important connections.

7. Most organizations will release profiles of the previous year’s winner. Take a look at those to find out what kind of people they’re looking for. This might give you some ideas on what to include in your own application.