Scholarships provide gift money that does not have to be repaid. That makes scholarships an attractive way to help pay for college. Most scholarships are awarded directly by the college you attend, but there are also other sources of scholarship aid. Federal and state governments, employers, credit and professional organizations, some private companies, foundations, individuals, and religious and civic organizations offer scholarships. But how can you find out about these?
To search for scholarships, choose a couple of the free scholarship search engines described below. And remember, any scholarship service that requests money to apply is likely to be a scam.
• FastWeb (fastweb.com) connects you to targeted scholarships based on your profile (strengths, interests, skills, groups).
• SRN (studentscholarshipsearch.com) matches students to appropriate scholarships based on strengths, talents, field of study, sports, achievements and background.
• College Resource Network (collegeresourcenetwork.com) also includes many minority scholarships in its database.
• School Soup (goodcall.com) allows users to search through thousands of awards with no fee or account signup required.
• Cappex (cappex.com) comprises a database of scholarships worth over $11 billion.
• BigFuture (bigfuture.collegeboard.org) offers a searchable scholarship database.
• Scholarships.com compares your background with its database and identifies good matches.