There is a scholarship (or many scholarships) out there for everyone.  Every student has some skill, interest, experience, or characteristic that may make them an attractive candidate for one scholarship or another.  And while we often refer to scholarships as “free money,” scholarships don’t actually come for free.  It takes work to thoughtfully consider your strengths and research the scholarships that might be most appropriate for you.  While the effort that goes into finding and winning scholarships may be akin to a part-time job, we at College Coach want to make your job a little easier.  This on-going scholarship series highlights a new scholarship each week.  Check out the below, along with the other posts in the series, and you may discover a funding resource that will make covering that college bill a little (or a lot!) easier.

Ian Fisher guest hosted the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation. Continuing with Beth’s “office hours” series from the week before, Ian devoted the majority of the segment to answering our listeners’ questions. A wide array of topics were covered—including an entire segment on living like a college student—providing listeners a fun, humorous, and informative hour.

In last week’s episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, host Sally Ganga and her guests addressed a wide variety of topics: economical travel timing and destinations for college students, a check-in on the activities section of the college application during our Application Workshop series, and scholarship and loan scams.

In last week’s episode of Getting In: a College Coach Conversation, Beth Heaton welcomed guests to talk about predictability in admission to the most selective colleges, the continuation of our Application Workshop series, and some of the wackiest scholarships up for grabs. 

Think you have to be a straight-A student or have income below the poverty line to qualify for a college scholarship? Think again! Thousands of scholarships are awarded annually with requirements based not upon academics or family finances, but upon talents, interests, activities, fields of study, commitments to causes, physical characteristics, medical conditions, or simple creativity.

Congratulations on progressing to National Merit Finalist status! While you may be enjoying the recognition this has afforded you within your school and community, you might also be wondering what this designation means for you from a financial perspective?

According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, about 50-60% of National Merit Finalists receive funding as a result of their status. You could receive one of three types of awards:

• A one-time $2,500 scholarship from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. All Finalists are automatically considered for this award, but the NMSC awards it only to the top of the National Merit Finalist pool.

Deadlines and Organization Matter When Searching for Scholarships!

Earlier in our scholarship series, we wrote about finding and identifying different types of scholarships. This week, we’ll share tips and tricks for staying organized, a critical part of the process of maximizing your scholarships.

Students should begin researching outside scholarship opportunities well in advance of receiving their admission acceptance letters, as many scholarship programs have early deadlines. In many cases, scholarship deadlines coincide with admissions deadlines, which can make for a very busy fall! Add this work to the work of your senior year, and you’ll recognize immediate incentive to stay on top of things.

As a new mom to twin daughters, paying for multiple students in college at one time is something I think about all the time. I’m sure I’m not alone.  As we discussed last week, merit aid (or scholarships) are available to students for a variety of reason – many of them unrelated to academic, athletic, or artistic prowess! Just as there are scholarships for tall and short individuals, there are a handful of colleges that currently offer special discounts or scholarships to siblings and multiples.

While not all colleges offer discounts or scholarships to multiples, I would highly encourage families to ask financial aid offices if they do offer such programs.

When I began refusing to eat meat in high school, I drove my mother crazy.  All of a sudden, she had to cook two separate family dinners each night:  one for the carnivores in the house and one for me. (Shame on me – while I had embraced eating vegetarian food, I had not yet mastered cooking it myself. I guess I owe her one.)

For any parents of vegetarian high schoolers out there enduring similar frustrations with your child’s newly restrictive diet, I have some good news.  Your child’s vegetarianism may just pay off for you… in the form of a college scholarship.

Tip #3: Online database searches can yield results!

In the last two posts of our Scholarship Series, we’ve covered different types of scholarships; this week we’ll dig into one of the main resources for discovering those scholarships.

Reputable databases provide another option for acquiring monies for college. Free scholarship databases are dynamic search engines and give students an opportunity to create a profile, share demographic information, and input their specific academic interests and talents. In return, students are provided with a list of possible scholarship opportunities matching the criteria entered into the database. After reviewing the results, families can then decide which opportunities they should realistically pursue.