Show Me the Money! - Part III

As promised, I'll devote this post to resources that provide information on scholarships. Way "back in the day" I received a scholarship from a very unlikely source. My father worked as a pharmacist in a drugstore that gave out S&H Green Stamps. You would collect the stamps and lick them into books which you could then redeem for appliances, cookware, etc. (Ask your grandparents!) Since my dad worked in a place that distributed the stamps, I was eligible to apply. I won the scholarship and it paid for a great deal of my tuition. The only downside was that every time my tuition bill was due and I would present my award proof at the bursar's office, some comedian would always have to comment on how many books I must have had to save up! I would never have known of that scholarship had my father not worked in that store. Today the internet makes information on scholarships readily available.

collegeboard.org has a scholarship finder. Search "scholarship" to be taken to a comprehensive guide as to how to find scholarships and to link to Scholarship Search and FastWeb. The College Board co-sponsors a scholarship program with the Siemens Foundation to increase "access to higher education for talented mathematics, science, engineering, and technology students in the the United States". The Board also publishes a book, Getting Financial Aid 2012, which is available through this site. FastWeb at www.fastweb.com is another free scholarship search service which also offers career planning and information about special programs such as Study Abroad and the military.

I really like the zinch.com site. It offers a free scholarship search that includes information about college, grad school and vocational school awards. The search filters information for students freshman through senior year in high school as well as grad school students and working professionals. Information about awards provided by corporations as well as zinch itself is also available.

In my post about the Prudential Prestigious Awards and the Metro PCS Leaders and Scholars Program on December 10, 2010, I discussed how looking further into a program and investigating its website carefully may help you discover links to other sources that provide scholarship info. In reading about those programs, I found that the Prudential program is administered by International Scholarship and Tuition Services, Inc. at http://www.applyists.com . It provides links to ScholarUp (www.Scholarup.net), Scholarships.com (www.scholarships.com) and other sites of interest to scholarship applicants.

States have their own Higher Education Agencies. The New Jersey Higher Education Agency at www.hesaa.org gives information about New Jersey Tuition Aid Grants and scholarships available to NJ students such as the Dana Christmas Scholarship which is funded entirely by the Public Service Electric and Gas Foundation. Check your state's agency.

For those who want to apply for scholarships that require an essay or some type of competition, there are books such as Secrets to Winning a Scholarship by Mark Kantrowitz in conjunction with FastWeb. Get Cash for College: Secrets to Winning Scholarship by Gen Tanabe and Kelly Tanabe has also received good reviews.
There are many of these guides but the two listed are pretty recent. That's important when searching for funds, especially in this economy where many sponsors may have cut back or even eliminated their scholarship programs. That's one of the reasons I prefer using the program searches available online.

In preparing this post I am impressed, once again, with the wealth of information available to anyone who can access a computer. And to think I had to depend on a lick 'em, stick 'em stamp program which I was lucky to find by chance and circumstance. Thanks, Dad and the Sperry & Hutchinson Foundation!