The Prepared Student

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College Prep: Scholarships & How to Find Them

College is a big investment. Few students will pay full price for their undergraduate degrees thanks to things like grants and financial aid, but, even still, going to college is an expensive commitment. Every dollar that students take out in student loans will need to be repaid with interest, so taking out as little in student loans as possible is a great goal. One thing students can do that may lower the cost of their education is to apply for scholarships. Here, we’re covering what types of scholarships students should look for, where to find them, and how to apply for them.

Let’s face it: College is EXPENSIVE, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. The current national student loan debt total sits somewhere around $1.4 trillion dollars. TRILLION! It’s hard to even conceptualize just how much money that is.

Why is national students loan debt so high? Well, college really is expensive. Even with financial aid and grants, many students will spend tens of thousands of dollars to obtain their degrees.

So, anything you can do to lower your total college tuition cost or assist you in paying off your student loan debt is going to be beneficial, and future you will thank you for it. Remember that scholarships are just one piece of the money-saving puzzle when it comes to college costs. Learn more about other potential cost-savings methods in our post about lowering overall college costs.

Scholarships are a great way to save money on college. Scholarships are similar to grants in that they are GIFTED money. That means you DO NOT have to pay any of the money back after you’ve finished your degree. Someone has packaged up a cash gift for you and that gets applied to your tuition costs. That’s awesome!

Yet, scholarships can cause students a lot of stress. The biggest difficulty seems to arrive in two areas: finding scholarships & applying for scholarships. How do students find scholarships that they qualify for? And once they’ve found them, where do they begin with the process of actually applying for them?

Additionally, scholarships can be quite competitive, depending on the geographical area a scholarship opportunity covers (some scholarships are local, while others are on a national scale) and how broad the requirements for the scholarship are (can any high schooler apply or just students pursuing Division II tennis?). Scholarships take a good amount of time to apply for, and, if students are continually turned down for scholarships, they may be deterred from continuing to apply for others.

However, it’s a really, really good idea to apply for as many scholarships as a student can find that they qualify for.

Finding Scholarships

Scholarships are free money that someone gives to you to be used toward your education. FREE MONEY. That’s amazing, so you should definitely run after any scholarship opportunities that you can find that you qualify for. But a lot of the time it’s FINDING the scholarships to even apply for that is the hard part. How do you know where to look for scholarships?

Step One: Brainstorm. What types of scholarships might you qualify for?

Think of scholarships as belonging to different categories: geographical, academic, interest-based, athletic, medical

Geographical scholarships: This type of scholarship will be available only to students residing in a certain area. For example, this could be a scholarship awarded by the government to a student residing in Minnesota, or it could be a smaller geographical area, like a local Lion’s Club awarding a scholarship to a student graduating from a certain high school.

Academic scholarships: These are any scholarships that are awarded to students based on their ability to reach or maintain specific academic standards. This could be like maintaining a certain GPA or reaching a certain ACT scores. Oftentimes, this type of scholarship, called a merit-based scholarship, will be awarded directly from the college or university a student ends up attending, but there are outside scholarships like this, as well, so doing some research into this area is a great idea if you excel academically.

Interest-based scholarships: These scholarships are geared at specific interests or subjects. For example, there are scholarships for students interested in pursuing an art degree, for students who are passionate about dance, students who volunteer with specific organizations, and more. When looking for interest-based scholarships, students should reflect on what topics and areas they might qualify for scholarship opportunities. What extracurriculars are you active in? Are you planning to join a certain club or organization during college? Do you have a passionate hobby that you practice regularly? You never know what types of scholarships are out there unless you start looking. Consider any and all interests you have. You might find something awesome.

Athletic scholarships: Oftentimes, athletic scholarships will also be granted directly through the college or university that a student athlete goes on to enroll in. However, there are also TONS of outside athletic scholarships. This doesn’t always have to be an athletic scholarship for a student who is going to go on to play a sport, either. These could be scholarships for an athlete who has shown exceptional skill and sportsmanship during high school sports or someone who is going on to pursue sports administration or sports announcing, or some other related athletic area. If you participated in high school athletics and were passionate about it, spend some time looking for athletic scholarships, even if you aren’t planning to play a sport during college. Again, you never know what you might find!

Medical scholarships: This is a pretty straightforward type of scholarship. Basically, there are many different organizations that offer scholarships to students who have certain medical conditions. For example, the Diabetes Scholars Foundation offers multiple $5,000 scholarships each year to students with Type 1 Diabetes. Now, obviously only students with Type 1 Diabetes would qualify for these scholarships, but diabetic students may have no idea that there even are scholarship opportunities specifically for diabetic students. So, if you have a specific medial condition, it can be beneficial to do some research to see if you can find potential scholarship opportunities specific to that condition.

Step Two: Search. Use the resources available to you to hunt for scholarships you might qualify for.

School Scholarships: A great place to start is the schools where you’ve applied or plan to apply. Once you know what colleges you plan to apply to, do some research on their tuition and scholarship packages. Visit the Financial Aid and Tuition pages of the colleges’ websites. Many schools will offer automatic scholarships for certain students who meet a specific test score and GPA threshold, and there are many other grants and scholarships that will vary from school to school. Make sure you know what is available at the schools you’ll apply to, and if there is a scholarship that you qualify for, make sure that you know the steps you need to take to be considered for it. Many scholarships will require a separate application from your standard college app.

Outside Scholarships: There are TONS of scholarships that people and companies offer to students going off to pursue their undergraduate degrees. Do some research to see if you can find scholarships that you qualify for. Furthermore, expand your research to outside your community. If you’re involved in a specific group or have a history of working for a particular cause, it’s possible that you could find many scholarships that fit with your background. Once you find scholarships that you qualify for, most scholarship applications simply include filling out a form and writing an essay. Take your time and make sure you submit a strong application because scholarships are competitive. Every penny that you can save on your college education will pay off in the long term because that is money that you won’t have to pay anyone back, and it will therefore not be subject to interest.

Start local: It’s possible that your local community and community businesses will have information on local scholarships that you could qualify for. Talk to your high school guidance counselor or college counselor about local scholarships — they should know about the majority of those offered. These scholarships will generally be less competitive than scholarships that are open to students residing in larger geographical areas, so these are great opportunities that students should make sure to take advantage of.

Once you’ve exhausted your local resources, start to broaden your search to scholarships offered throughout the country. You can do this with the help of several websites and scholarship search tools that are available on the internet.

Below are some great sites that might be helpful for your scholarship search. For most of these sites, you’ll be prompted to create an account and answer questions about yourself to help the site determine what scholarships you might be a match for. This is super helpful, as you’re going to find TONS of scholarships that you DON’T qualify for (many scholarships are insanely specific — one $10,000 scholarships presented to an incoming college freshman that is a female playing on the tennis team of College XYZ). These tools can help you focus your time on those scholarships you DO qualify for and avoid reading through those you don’t.

Scholarship Locator Websites

Fastweb Scholarship Search

College Board Scholarship Locator

Niche Scholarships

Scholarships.com Database

Sallie Mae Scholarship Search & College Planning

Cappex Scholarship Search

Peterson's Scholarship Search


There are many other sites out there like those noted above. We’ve picked some trusted sites from established companies that are prominent in the higher education scene. No matter how you go about it, work hard trying to find scholarships that you qualify for. There is NO LIMIT to the number of scholarships you can apply for when the money is coming from sources other than directly from the school. With that being said, the more scholarships you find, the more scholarships you can apply for, and the more money you can potentially win in scholarship awards and thus save on your education.

Applying for Scholarships

Each scholarship will have its own unique requirements. Most will require students to fill out some kind of paperwork, and most will require submission of a written essay on a very specific topic or prompt.

Plan to Put in a Lot of Time

It’s important to note that students should work hard on scholarship applications. Perhaps students should actually work even harder on scholarship applications that they do even on their regular college applications. When you think about it, it all comes down to competition. If you can find scholarships that you qualify for, now it’s your job to compete with any other applicants and show why you’re deserving of the scholarship money. Any FREE money you can get to put toward your education is going to make future you SO happy. Taking the time and effort to write an awesome essay now will definitely be worth it in the long run if it means free money for college.

Start Early

Many students think that they can’t start thinking about scholarship applications until they are high school seniors, but you can actually start your planning and preparing much earlier than that. Senior year of high school is a super busy time. Students are busy with difficult classes, college applications, and more. The best thing students can do is to start the scholarship process early.

We recommend that students start to do research on scholarships during their sophomore and junior years of high school. This is a great thing for families to discuss together. The earlier you start, the more scholarships opportunities you will likely find. There will be more time to talk to local corporations and organizations that may offer scholarships, gather information from counselors, and space out online research a little over time. This will avoid any rushed applications and stresses with trying to meet deadlines.

And yet, if it comes down to the wire, it’s not the end of the world! Here’s a little-known fact for you: college students can still apply for scholarships. Yes, you read that right! That means that students can still apply for college scholarships even once they’ve already enrolled and started their college coursework. In fact, we recommend that students who have been paying attention to scholarship offerings and applied prior to college take advantage of this as well. Just because you applied for scholarships already doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply for more!

Follow All Instructions

Each scholarship you find that you qualify for will come with specific instructions. It is VERY important to make sure that you follow the instructions exactly.

If you fail to include a required piece of information, like an official transcript, your application will likely not even be considered for the scholarship award. Similarly, if you miss the deadline, even by a couple of hours, your application will probably be thrown out.

We recommend that students create a detailed schedule for completing scholarship applications to ensure they include the necessary information and complete it in the necessary timeframe. For example, if you know you have a scholarship application that’s due on December 31st, and it requires an official transcript, a letter of recommendation, and a written essay, you might want to write down exactly WHEN you’ll request the official transcript from your school, WHEN you’ll ask for a letter of recommendation (plan to do this ASAP!) and from WHOM, etc.

The more proactive you are, the less likely you are to run into issues with completing the scholarship application in its entirety.

Wait…

And once you’ve sent in your scholarship application that you’ve worked so hard on, you’ll wait…

Each scholarship will also have its own schedule regarding when students will find out about awards. Sometimes it will be a couple of weeks. Sometimes it could be a couple of months. It depends in part on how many applicants submit applications that need to be reviewed and how long it takes the company to come up with a final decision. This information should be available to you from the start with the details of the scholarship.

It’s important to note that sometimes the organization or company will not reach out to applicants who have not won a scholarship award. For some of these scholarships, there are just way too many applicants for the companies to reach out to each applicant separately. That being said, do not feel bad if you don’t get a response back about a specific scholarship. Remember that there are multiple applicants, and sometimes there is only one scholarship award. You aren’t going to win all of scholarships that you apply for, but the more you apply for, the higher your chances of receiving some scholarship money.

Additional Scholarship Resources for Minnesota Residents:

For students residing in Minnesota, particularly those who plan to remain in Minnesota for college, these are some other great local resources to check out for potential scholarship opportunities:

College Grant - Minnesota

Minnesota Office of Higher Education

The cost of a college education has gone up exponentially over the past few decades, and it shows no signs of slowing down. The cost of tuition and room and board continues to increase, and many students rely on student loans to help them obtain their college degrees. Student loans are a great resource that can help students get the education they want or need to pursue their longterm career goals. However, student loans can also become a huge burden for students, as they take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get their education. Know that student loans are NOT always your only option.

We encourage students to explore as many ways to cut college costs as possible before turning to student loans. Scholarships are a great possibility to explore because there are thousands of scholarships offered by organizations and companies every year. If students and families take the time to have conversations with high school guidance counselors and college admissions representatives, do thorough research, and take time crafting strong scholarship responses, this can be a viable option to save students valuable time and money during their early adulthood.


Good luck, and happy searching!


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