My Top 5 Scholarship Hunting Tips and How We Lost $4000 of EASY MONEY by Breaking Rule #1!

🎓 If you were to ask me to give you one piece of advice about looking for college scholarships, I wouldn't be able to do it! There's so much great information available, I couldn't possibly put it all into one tip. So today, I'm going to give you FIVE!

The fundamental truth about hunting for scholarships is that you actually have to HUNT! There are thousands out there so it's probably going to be of greater benefit for you to start as early as possible and with a strategy in mind. For us, we started when Alex, my daughter, was in the eighth grade.

 Here are my top 5 suggestions to start hunting:

   #5. Start hunting early! You may be surprised to know that there are college scholarships that students can start applying for as young as thirteen years old.

    #4. Look everywhere! Here's a quick note; there are thousands of scholarships available with multiple ways to access the same information. There are some great websites that serve as scholarship databases such as Fastweb.com, or Scholarships.com. Websites like these work by first asking you to set up your profile and answering a few questions. Then the site builds a list of scholarships for you.

Another great resource would be scholarship reference books. My favorite book to use is The Ultimate Scholarship Book. I normally buy the most current version of this book every year to have available when working with clients but most local libraries keep them on hand as well.

    #3. Pay attention to eligibility qualifications! You generally want to look for scholarship topics that you or your student has experience with. Like I've said earlier, we started before Alex was in high school. At that time, she thought that she wanted to study mechanical engineering. Her career interest was one of the search topics that we used. Other filters that proved helpful were based on her personal interest such as religious preference, race/gender-specifications, hobbies, and job affiliations. We also looked for home state or regional awards as well as merit-based scholarships that are primarily offered by individual schools.

    #2. Apply, apply, apply but keep track of your applications! The more applications that you complete and submit, the better your chances of winning will be! It's also important to keep track of your applications. We found it easiest to just use a spreadsheet for that part!

    #1. Watch out for deadlines! Now, to me, this one is the most important tip because if you've done all of the work, but miss the deadline, that's a lot of time and money lost...

That's exactly how we missed an easy $4000 opportunity!

Remember when I said that we started when my daughter was in the eighth grade and thought that she wanted to become a mechanical engineer? Well, one of her extracurricular activities was competing in FIRST Robotics. Alex joined her first team in the third grade and continued all the way through high school. 

In addition to building great robots and competing in world-class events, one of the amazing benefits to FIRST is the scholarship opportunities!

Southeast Missouri State University offers a renewable $1000 scholarship to one member of a FIRST Robotics Competition team per year. For this school year, Alex is the only one from her team attending the university. 

All she had to do was apply...before the DEADLINE but we missed it! Well actually, we totally forgot and by the time we thought about it, it was too late. That was an easy and expensive mistake so please be careful!

So now that I've given you my Top 5 Scholarship Hunting Tips, I would also like to offer a helpful tool that you can use to get started on your scholarship hunt.

There are thousands of scholarships out there but how do you know which ones to apply for? The Scholarship Hunting 101 worksheets are full of great ideas for search topics. Use this link to download your free copy today!