Tag Archives: scholarships

Scholarship Friday, scholarships

Scholarship Friday: 10 Easy Scholarships

 

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scholarship

What could be easier than winning a scholarship and you didn’t even have to write an essay and/or fill out a long application? There isn’t. The rewards may not be as big as those long, involved essay scholarships, but 10 $1000 scholarship add up to $10,000. That’s not chump change! Most of them just take a few minutes to enter:

Zinch Weekly Scholarship

Every week, Zinch gives away $1000 to one high school or college student. Zinch believes strongly in education and works hard to connect students with their best-fit colleges. But they also know that it can be expensive which is they award this scholarship this easy to enter scholarship. Just a short form and answering a question in three sentences and you could add $1000 to your college fund.

College Week Live Monthly Scholarship

There are two requirements for entering this $1000 scholarship program:

  1. Apply online by registering at College Week Live’s website (http://www.collegeweeklive.com). Limit one (1) Application per person. Application includes complete name, contact, and high school information as required on the CollegeWeekLive registration form.
  2. Additionally, applicants must login and participate in a CollegeWeekLive virtual event held between the first and last day of the month by no later than the last day of any given month at 11:59 PM EST to be eligible for that month’s scholarship. Participation requires visiting at least 3 college booths.

College Prowler $2000 No Essay Scholarship

The $2,000 “No Essay” Scholarship is open to all students and those planning on enrolling within 12 months. The monthly winner will be determined by random drawing and then contacted directly and announced on our Facebook page. One entry per person, but you can come back each month to try again. High schoolers, adults looking to head back to school, current college students and anyone else looking to attend college or graduate school within 12 months.

Scholarship Points

The ScholarshipPoints program is free to join and provides you with the opportunity to win thousands of dollars in scholarships each month. Members earn points by doing what they already do online: shopping, reading, gaming, searching, quizzes, polls, and more. The more you do – the more you earn – the better your chance to win a scholarship! Register today and you could be the next $10,000 scholarship winner!

Do Something Scholarships

If you’re ready to hop on your phone and start applying, one of your first stops should be DoSomething.org’s scholarship listing. The long-standing youth activism organization offers a rotating array of scholarship competitions that usually require nothing more than a text message to enter. Deadlines and programs vary, so it’s worth following @DoSomething on Twitter for updates.

University Language $500 Scholarship

What could be easier than uploading your favorite photo? What does college look like through your camera lens? Show University Language Services for a chance to win a $500.00 college scholarship! As a prospective student making college campus visits, you have a lot to take in: the dorms, the classrooms, the cafeteria, the football stadium … not to mention the atmosphere! Whatever it is, submit a photo you’ve taken, along with a description of between 100-200 words on why that photo represents what college means to you.

$1000 GPA Isn’t Everything Monthly Scholarship

Tell Cappex about yourself and don’t hold back in a simple form to be eligible for the $1,000 A GPA Isn’t Everything Scholarship. This scholarship opportunity will be available at any college or university. Applications accepted for a limited time so apply now.

Got Chosen $1000 Monthly Scholarship

GotChosen is offering a recurring monthly scholarship to help college students. The GotChosen $1000 Every Month Scholarship is easy and free to enter. The scholarship is not awarded based on academic achievement or financial need. Instead, a new winner is selected every month by a random drawing.

Open to all fields of study, the $1,000 must be used for educational expenses, this includes: tuition, fees, books, supplies, equipment required for study, or towards repayment of outstanding student loans. Virtually anyone 18 years old or older is eligible to participate.

Frame My Future Scholarship

Students are asked to submit an original “creation” through an image which expressed what they hope to achieve in their personal and professional life after college. Entries include photographs, poems. essays. collages, drawings, paintings and other imaginative pieces. The entry needs to communicate: This is how I “Frame My Future”, and include a brief accompanying description. Four winners will receive a  $1000 scholarship.

Scholarship Detective $1500 Scholarship

ScholarshipDetective is a free scholarship search engine. To celebrate their launch we are awarding two $1,500 college scholarships. To enter just complete this application including a 140 character or less statement on how you plan to use the scholarship money. Deadline for entry is December 31, 2013.

Don’t delay. Many of these entry deadlines are within the next few months. 10 entries mean 10 chances to win. And remember: you can’t win if you don’t enter!

 

scholarships

$10,000 Scholarship Essay Contest

 

fire scholarship

This year, The Foundation for the Individual Rights in Education is once again offering high school juniors and seniors the chance to win scholarships towards their education. 

High school juniors and seniors for the 2013–2014 school year who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents are eligible to participate in FIRE’s $10,000 scholarship essay contest. To enter, students must submit an essay between 800 and 1,000 words on the provided topic below.

One $10,000 first prize, one $5,000 second prize, and three $1,000 runner-up prizes will be awarded for the best essays. Four $500 winners will be chosen from the remaining entrants in a drawing.

FIRE will accept essay contest entries from August 1, 2013 to January 1, 2014. Winners will be announced January 31, 2014.

Instructions for the Essay:

Familiarize yourself with FIRE and FIRE’s issues. Our mission statement:

The mission of FIRE mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.

Reading FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus and exploring thefire.org are good ways to become more familiar with FIRE.

Watch these two short videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSwp-UTNzus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS6IA93o79s

Students should also watch FIRE’s other videos, available on YouTube.com/theFIREorg.

Answer the essay question: Why is free speech important at our nation’s colleges and universities? Using examples from both videos, discuss how censorship of student speech is incompatible with higher education. Your essay should be 800–1,000 words.

For complete details, as well as the submission form, please visit http://thefire.org/contest.

 

financial aid, scholarships

Check out this scholarship app

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scholly app

Every parent and student can use some help with the scholarship search process. And what is it they say? There’s a scholarship app for that!

Christopher Gray, known as the “Million-Dollar Scholar” after being awarded $1.3 million in scholarships, has created an app to help students search for scholarships. Over the past three years, Gray has also helped other families manually scour through databases, and figured, “Hey, I need something that can help.  There has to be a faster way.”

scholly appThe app uses eight specific parameters, like state, GPA, or race, to instantly filter through a deep directory of scholarships available for the prospective student.

“It’s extremely simple,” says Gray and that ultimately was the goal. Since students are using their smartphones for just about everything today, he felt the app fit the needs of his audience.

A recent study, conducted by Sallie Mae, shows that 39% of families used scholarship funds to pay for college during the 2012-2013 academic year and Scholly connects users with relevant scholarships in about five minutes.  Scholly’s database is updated monthly to remove scholarships that are no longer available, add scholarships, and refresh deadlines.

Scholly can be purchased for $0.99 in the Apple App Store and Google Play.The app’s costs were intentionally positioned to make it affordable. Pay 99 cents and you may get thousands of dollars for college.

 

 

financial aid, scholarships, Uncategorized

Yes you can (win that scholarship)!

 

yes you canYes you can (win that scholarship)! “Yes you can” are the call words for many motivational speakers, school programs, political campaigns and even song lyricists. The scholarship hunt requires that type of motivation: perseverance, attention to detail, and the desire to succeed. We all know that success requires attention to the goal and focusing on the prize. The scholarship search is no different.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!” That pretty much sums up the search process. Scholarships are the icing on the cake in the college admissions process–get into the right school and fund it with free money. Winning a scholarship to pay for college is every parent’s dream and the scholarship search process is every student’s nightmare. But with a little effort and some good advice on how and where to search, the effort will be worth their time. There is money out there for every type of student and every area of interest. Yes you can (win that scholarship)!

Read about five cliches that apply to the search for scholarship bucks>>

financial aid, scholarships, Uncategorized

10 Scholarships Summer Prep Tips for Students

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Today’s guest post is by Monica Matthews of How to Win College Scholarships. Monica’s advice for parents and students is always helpful and timely. Her proven track record of winning scholarships for her own family and her “how-to” approach that helps other parents do the same, makes her an expert in the scholarship search process.

____________

scholarshipsFor students, summer vacation usually means sun, beaches, and fun.  For parents of the college-bound, however, summer means one step closer to college tuition bills and students loans.  There are a number of things students can do to get a jump-start in the college scholarship process during the summer, while at the same time saving time for fun in the sun.

  1. Volunteer – Helping others is a great way to explore career options, meet mentors, and rack up invaluable community service hours that scholarship providers look for in their applicants.
  2. Write – Scholarship essays are how judges get to know students on a deeper level.  Students can find some early deadline scholarships and practice writing the required essays. Continue reading 10 Scholarships Summer Prep Tips for Students →
admissions, college guidance, college planning, Guest Posts, test prep, websites

Compare Colleges side-by-side with FindTheBest.com

Whether you are eagerly awaiting those acceptance letters or are still applying (or both), the fact remains that you need to pick the best school you can go to, and you need to find out which particular college that is.

FindTheBest is an unbiased, data driven comparison engine that allows students and parents to look at schools. Researching colleges and universities becomes so much simpler with filtered options such as location, tuition, average SAT score, size, religious affiliation and other important factors. And once those acceptance letters start rolling in, students can create custom comparison lists to see the differences between each school side-by-side.

Parents should also look into college scholarships, fellowships, and grants to mitigate the financial burden that arrives when a child is sent off to college, and students should look into them to shorten the years that it will take to repay student loans.  FindTheBest also has a comprehensive list and information including enrollment level, minimum GPA, gender and background specificity, and scholarships to particular schools.

If your student is still a junior in high school, then the SAT and ACT test prep class comparison tool will help you get that high composite score that colleges love to see. Test prep classes run all year-round, but the best times to take the tests are in the spring.

The college application process is fundamentally imperative to the success of a student’s academic career.  These tools were developed with that in mind, and all of them are completely at your disposal to use in navigating the college maze.

 

admissions, college costs, college guidance, college planning, financial aid

University of savings: financial aid tips

mini college graduation cap on cashBig college dreams have a big price tag. Most students use some form of aid to pay for college. According to CollegeBoard, more than $207 billion in aid is available. From federal loans to scholarship contests, opportunities to knock down college costs appear to those who search. Leave no stone unturned and look into these college aid resources to cover the costs.

FAFSA

With the potential for grants, loans and work-study incentives, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is square one when it comes to paying for college. The FAFSA analyzes family financial information through the federal-need formula. Among other things, FAFSA takes tax information into account, so Collegeboard.org recommends filing tax returns before starting the application. However, if your taxes aren’t ready, file with estimated amounts from last year and update with correct amounts after filing.

Aimed at providing a path to college for any student, the FAFSA is particularly advantageous for disadvantaged students, who have a better chance to receive free grants and scholarships.

Students can fill out this lengthy application at Fafsa.ed.gov.

Scholarship Contests

Students with 4.0 GPAs and high SAT scores aren’t the only ones who can take advantage of scholarship money. Scholarship contests offer students an equal playing field to show their stuff. Whether it’s an essay, video or presentation, these performance-based contests highlight talent in any field.

Scholarships.com lists news opportunities in various categories, including minority scholarships, corporate scholarships and even non-academic scholarships. A quick Google News search for “scholarship contests” will return the latest contents and deadlines.

Ask your guidance counselor for additional local opportunities, and explore the internet for the latest scholarship offers.

Student Loans

Free money is preferable, but loans enable students to have a classic college experience even if they can’t pay for it up front. This growing trend in financial aid is putting thousands of students through college and collecting payments from millions. In early January, student loan debt in the U.S. surpassed $1 trillion, according to Foxbusiness.com, and that number is expected to grow even more.

The FAFSA provides opportunities for federal student loans. Sallie Mae bank offers a private option to compete with these government offerings.

Loans can provide a worry-free college experience, but don’t over-borrow and saddle yourself with too much debt. Once graduation comes, failing to make payments can compromise your financial stability. The rule of thumb with student loans–borrow wisely.

Unconventional Aid

Some scholarship opportunities don’t fit into traditional molds. Unique scholarships give students that may not otherwise stand out a chance at college aid. The vertically-challenged student, for example, can take advantage of the Little People of America Association’s scholarship for students 4’10” or shorter. Left-handed students that have had to deal with awkward desks and sloppy writing are in luck, too. The Frederick and Mary F. Beckley Scholarship Program offers money for southpaws who demonstrate leadership skills.

Every student has something unique about him or her. Search for the scholarships that separate you from the crowd.

Work and pay as you go

Many students are choosing to work and pay as they go. High school students work during the summers and save for textbooks and other essentials not covered in tuition. Some students choose the community college route, attending classes as they can afford to pay for them. Other students opt to use the work study program at their college to supplement tuition expenses.

Colleges are recognizing that tuition costs are rising the average family cannot afford to chunk down tens of thousands of dollars at the beginning of the school term. They offer payment plans which spread the tuition out over the school year to help parents budget and pay as they go.

College is in reach if you take the time to research the many opportunities available and use that information to make a college choice that best fits into your available budget. Don’t let financial barriers keep you from achieving your dreams; and don’t let financial barriers lure you into overwhelming debt just to pay for a high-priced college.

 

scholarships

Freedom in Academia Essay Contest

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is currently running an essay contest (the Freedom in Academia Essay Contest). High school juniors and seniors for the 2012-2013 school year are eligible to participate in FIRE’s essay contest. To enter, students must submit an essay between 800 and 1,000 words on the provided topic.

One $10,000 first prize, one $5,000 second prize, and three $1,000 runner-up prizes will be awarded for the best essays. Four $500 winners will be chosen from the remaining entrants in a drawing.

FIRE will accept essay contest entries from August 1 to November 25, 2012.

Instructions:

Familiarize yourself with FIRE and FIRE’s issues. Our mission statement:

FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them. A great resource is FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus. For more information, explore thefire.org.

Watch two short videos about real students who were censored and punished for speech that is protected by the U.S. Constitution. Students should also watch FIRE’s other videos, available on YouTube.com/theFIREorg.

Answer the essay question: Why is free speech important at our nation’s colleges and universities? Using examples from both videos, discuss how censorship of student speech is incompatible with higher education. Your essay should be 800-1,000 words.

Submit your essay through the online form at http://thefire.org/article/14663.html. Only current high school juniors and seniors (graduating in the spring of 2013 or 2014) may apply.

 

 

financial aid, scholarships

A Review-How to Win College Scholarships

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Being a College Prep Expert at CollegeExpertPanel.com has put me in contact with some other experts in the field of college admissions. This contact has given me the opportunity to once again, give you the BEST information from the BEST sources, helping you to help your student apply to college and get accepted.

When I find a product that can save you thousands of dollars on tuition, I get so excited because I know that you, as a parent, are in need of some financial relief. Let’s face it, even if you have saved and planned, who can’t afford to avail themselves of every opportunity to save money? On the other end of the spectrum, if you haven’t been able to gather a small fortune for college, tools that allow you to finance the education without parent loans are a godsend.

Monica Matthews’ “How to Win College Scholarships: A Guide for Parents in 10 Easy Steps” is one of those godsends. I have read this short, concise book and I can tell you she makes it EASY to hit the ground running, get organized, and help your student find those scholarships. She falls into a class that I like to call “parent advocates”. We are the ones who have done the leg work, succeeded, and want to pass on our parent related expertise to other parents. Monica has done the leg work in the scholarship search process. She found herself in that awkward place with her son–a promising student aspiring to college, and parents who wanted to support that decision financially.

Instead of taking out loans, or going back to work full-time, Monica opted to spend her time helping her son search, find and apply for scholarships. In 10 easy steps, she outlines the process she took, gives you bottom line tips along the way, and provides you with some “out-of-box” tools to help your student stand out with the scholarship committees. She addresses all the aspects of scholarship applications from essays, to recommendation letters, to transcripts, to the application completion and delivery.

The best part about Monica’s e-book is that it’s simple and easy to understand. If you follow her easy 10 step program, the scholarship process becomes doable for any parent and their student. You can sit back and hope that your student does all the work, or you can offer help and support by grabbing a copy of Monica’s book, reading it, and rolling up your sleeves.

Who wins? Your student will win by graduating without debt. You will win by helping your student find and win those scholarships for their undergraduate and online MBA degrees. Once those winning letters begin to flood your mailbox, you’ll be glad you took my advice and added Monica’s e-book to your college admissions library.

 

Grab yourself a copy TODAY–>How to Win College Scholarships: A Guide for Parents in 10 Easy Steps

 

 

scholarships

Scholarships.com “Short & Tweet” Scholarship

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Does your college-bound teen need some money for books? How about a new laptop for college? Or an iPad to take with them to school?

Scholarships.com has a scholarship that ANY student can enter. No essay. No stringent rules and regulations to follow. What could be simpler than that?

Here are the “deets” (a little shortened humor):

 

Step 1: Follow Scholarships.com on Twitter.

Step 2: @reply us with a tweet answering the question “What would an extra $1,000 for college mean to you?” Once you do this, you are automatically entered to win a $1,000 scholarship.

Step 3: You may enter as many times as you want but please limit your tweets to a reasonable amount per day. Each tweet will be a stand-alone entry and tweets that are submitted by non-followers, exceed 140 characters, do not include @Scholarshipscom or are submitted after the May 31st deadline will not be considered. From there, the Scholarships.com Team will determine which comment is most deserving of the award.

Starts: April 13th

Ends: May 31st

Number Available: 1

Amount: $1,000 for one first-prize winner; Scholarships.com hats and t-shirts for second- and third-prize winners