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.

Tip #2: Colleges are an important source of scholarships!

In this second part of our scholarship series, we will cover colleges themselves as a source for three very different types of scholarships – merit aid, donor-restricted scholarships, and department-supported scholarships. You may also want to refer to part one of our series, where we talk about the wide availability of scholarship money.

Merit Aid

A number of colleges offer “merit aid” or “merit scholarships.” Merit aid is distinct from financial aid, as it is awarded to students who offer a special talent to an institution, rather than demonstrating a financial need for assistance. Merit scholarships are often used as a recruitment tool because they might be offered in order to positively influence a student’s enrollment decision.

5 Things Everyone Should Know About Scholarships

Whenever there is mention of college, the conversation about scholarships isn’t far behind. But what are scholarships? How can you get them? How much are they worth? Who awards them? With the cost of higher education continually rising, students should take a proactive approach in locating scholarship opportunities to help cover their college expenses. We believe students should set reasonable goals and be aware of a few important things as they search for scholarships. Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce five things we think everyone should know about scholarships, starting with Part One below.

This is the fifth in a series of posts that college finance expert, Laurie Peltier, is writing about her own experience going through the college application and enrollment processes with her kids. Her previous posts focused on how to stay organized during the college search and final decision-making processes, getting to know your school and the Federal Work Study program. Here, she discusses the application process and benefits of the Army ROTC program.

There are many decisions teenagers make that can cause a parent’s heart to stop. Getting a tattoo, driving a motor cycle, and proposing marriage are good examples. When my daughter announced she was applying for an Army ROTC scholarship, my heart stopped. On the one hand, out of my three children I thought she was the most suited for it, but on the other it was not something I was knowledgeable about. While I can now say it was a good decision, it took a while to get to this point.

In addition to educational opportunities in the field of game creation and design, there are now scholarships for those who play. Play you say? Yes, you play, it pays! Now, I share a 20^th century parent’s natural concern for my 21^st century children who are engulfed by screens throughout their day. But all those hours spent indoors could be a potential scholarship goldmine. For all the young gamers (and their parents) out there, there are whole crops of college scholarship opportunities, degree programs, and entire gaming institutions that seem to have popped up overnight.

Programs in Game Design and Creation:  For years now, some schools have offered courses and even degrees in this field; the fact that you can now secure scholarships for gaming is rather new. For students interested in development, an entire gaming academy has been established at University Texas Austin.