The Grants and Scholarships Page |
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The Grants and Scholarships Page |
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Listed below, you will find a list of resources that will help you find grants, scholarships, and some loans for college. We will start out with sources that can be found on the World Wide Web. Farther down this web page will be a short list of Reference Books that will list thousands of grants, loans, and scholarships.
Many of the books and online "free money" databases make it sound so very easy to find the right grant for you. For MOST people, it is NOT that easy. We want to emphasize that, for most people, it takes a lot of time, effort, and patience to obtain grant and scholarship money. Many grants, scholarships, and free money are awarded on very specific criteria. For that reason, we have listed a number of what we feel are very good resources for finding college grants, scholarships, and some loans. Hopefully, some of these resources will help.
There are organizations on the Web that will provide financial aid search services, for free. These services will allow you to input information into a search box and then search for grants that are listed in their database (computer). We strongly recommend that you read the EXCELLENT article at College Scholarships.org that compares different grant and scholarship search services such as Fastweb, Scholarships.com, and many more. This article goes a long way to explain why there are varying results with the searches http://www.collegescholarships.org/search/helpful-reviews.htm.
These services allow access to millions of grants. The services are a convenient, quick, easy way to help you find grants that are available to you.
I have noticed in recent years that many scholarship search services want you to register and fill out a profile. The service tries to match your profile to a list of scholarships that they think that will fit your needs.
Definitely, the search services are NOT perfect. If you receive a list of grants, then it is possible that many on the list will not apply to you. Hopefully, a large number of them will apply to you, but many of the"hits", probably, may not be for you. Many of the scholarship search services ask you to fill out a personal profile so that the computer program can search the database in order to find the right grants for you, based on your profile. ALWAYS remember to avoid revealing sensitive information (like social security numbers). There are plenty of advertisments on the free scholarship services so read the pages carefully to make sure that you do not receive unwanted material. Please be careful of what you are filling out. Some of the web pages on the free scholarship search services can be confusing and you may find yourself filling out information for a college rather than the scholarship search website.
There are pros and cons to these free online scholarship search services, but it appears to us that the pros outweigh the cons. Of the searches that we performed on some of the following search services, we have to admit, that we were presented with some encouraging leads. As we stated above, out of the lists that we received, only a few of the grants looked like something that we could use. However, it is possible that only a few leads may be all that we need. If you do not receive a list that contains many grants, then you may want to try the survey again, but change some of the options / criteria that you used before. Maybe you were too specific the first time around.
YouTube Video: How to Find College Grants and Scholarships is a short six-minute video that gives you an overall look at where to find college grants and scholarships. If you have no idea on where to start to find financial aid, then this video will give you a good idea on how to go about finding free money in the form of financial aid, grants, and scholarships for college or trade schools for a variety of groups of people such as nursing students, single moms, women, traditional students, non-traditional students, and just about any U.S. Citizen seeking scholarships with the least amount of eligibility requirements.
College Scholarships.org is a very good website to start so that you can get an overall idea of what searching for financial aid is all about. A free scholarship search engine has been added to the website. are sources of information by different criteria such as ethnicity, gender, financial status, geographic location, and more.
Fastweb is a scholarship service that is free. It is part of the Monster.com company. Fastweb is one of the more popular and recognized free scholarship search services. You need to register and make a number of selections for your profile. Like most of the free search services, if you do not like the results, then go back and change (edit) some of your original profile criteria and then perform another search. PLEASE pay attention to the web pages as some of the pages/forms may be ADVERTISEMENTS for colleges that you are filling out and NOT the scholarship website's profile/registration.
Scholarships.com is an excellent site to find out all kinds of information about college, especially financial aid. Okay, this is only my opinion, but it is not as easy as it use to be in order to access all the information that Scholarships.com has. STILL, I think that it is great website to visit, but it seems to have gone the way that many of these scholarship websites have gone and that is to ask you for a profile and then the organization will try to provide a list of scholarships matching your profile. For some people, this works, but for other people the list is not as good as they wanted to see. Lists of scholarships based on different criteria can be found at the bottom of the scholarships.com main web page. You can click on menu items without filling out a type of registration form. Their scholarship search service is located at http://www.scholarships.com/scholarship-search.aspx. It is free, but you need to fill out a profile. PLEASE pay attention to the web pages as some of the pages/forms may be ADVERTISEMENTS for colleges that you are filling out and NOT the scholarship website's profile/registration.
CollegeBoard.com is a very well-respected organization that has been involved with college education since 1900. The search engine for scholarships is free, but you need to fill out a questionnaire/register. The scholarship search page can be found at: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/scholarship-search. Still, you can find some very good information without signing up by clicking the links on their web pages.
UNIGO.com has taken over some services such as ScholarshipExperts.com and Campus Discovery. Many of the scholarships offered by ScholarshipExperts.com and Campus Discovery continue to be offered by UNIGO. UNIGO offers a lot of information about scholarships. UNIGO will offer a number of their own scholarships such as the list found at https://www.unigo.com/scholarships/our-scholarships
NICHE.com is another service similar to UNIGO. NICHE will fund some of their own scholarships as well as list many other scholarships. The scholarships web page is located at https://www.niche.com/colleges/scholarships/
SallieMae's scholarship service is free and you need to register. This organization is well-known and can be considered one of the "nation's leading provider of saving, planning, and paying for education programs." As I say with many of the websites listed on this page, please look around SallieMae's website for more information.
Michigan State Libraries has a "Grants for Individuals" web page that is a compilation that "focuses primarily on funding opportunities for individuals, such as financial aid or scholarships for students, rather than funding for nonprofit organizations." This website has A LOT of information about "Grants and Related Resources" for a variety of people AND organizations.
We have seen requests for grants and scholarships based on special criteria such as "single moms" or "single parent." Slowly, we continue to research grants and scholarships for college. However, we are finding for some criteria that there just are not that many grants. Grants and scholarships based on the specific criteria of "single mom" is one such example. We list what we can find, so far, for grants and scholarships for "single moms," but it is not much. Single moms and single parents can take advantage of other grants, but there does not appear to be many grants devoted to the specific eligibility requirement of "single mom" or "single parent." Please click on the following links for lists of college grants and scholarships for specific groups:
This may come as a shock to some people, but before there was the World Wide Web, there were books that contained information. Still, there are EXCELLENT books that will list grants, loans, and scholarships according to different criteria such as field of study, ethnicity, gender, financial status, and more.
Some of these books are expensive. We advise and strongly recommend that you look for these books in your local LIBRARY. If your local library does not have them, then ask the library staff if they can try to interlibrary loan the books from another library. Usually, this is a FREE service.
Although the following books are great resources listing thousands of grants and scholarships, you have to keep in mind that it is likely that only SOME grants will apply to you. As we stated above, there are a lot of grants out there, but the eligibility requirements for most grants / scholarships are very, very specific. However, there are so many grants listed, that hopefully, you meet the specific requirements of some of the grants. Depending on your financial situation, just one, two, or a few grants can go A LONG WAY to pay for your education.
If you are not able to locate some of these books in a library or interlibrary loan them, then you may want to try Amazon.com. Reviews and links to affiliate book stores can provide some fair prices. A couple of the books listed here are very expensive and are shelved in the Reference section of a large city public library or a college library, usually.
College Grants and Scholarships with the Minimum Amount of Eligibility Requirements is a Kindle ebook that lists approximately 150 college scholarships that have the least amount of eligibility requirements, so that just about any U.S citizen or legal resident can apply for these scholarships. This ebook is in need of an update, but many of the scholarships listed in the ebook continue to be active. Some libraries may have access to this ebook. There are only so many scholarships for a specific group of people, whether it is Hispanic, single mothers, women, nursing students, veterans, students attending trade schools, students wanting scholarships with NO essays, or other groups. This ebook can provide a list of more available scholarships. Some of these scholarships require writing an essay while others require filling out just an application. There are NOT many scholarships available without specific, limiting criteria. There are many resources that will list thousands of scholarships, but a majority of them will have very specific requirements that prevents many students from applying to most of the scholarships listed in the resources. However, this Kindle ebook lists scholarships that most people within the U.S. can apply for. If you do not have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle Previewer in order to view Kindle books on your PC at http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000765261 OR https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A3IWA2TQYMZ5J6 . We know how difficult it is to format documents for the Kindle so the formatting might be kind of strange for some of the text. However, we find the text tolerable and the links work.
The College Blue Book: Scholarships, Fellowships, Grants, and Loans. Like many things, these days, many sources are available online or ONLY online. It appears that the lastest editions of "The College Blue Book" are available online. Please check with your library if this source is available to you in print or online. MacMillan Reference USA has been publishing this five-volume set for decades, which they call the College Blue Book . Usually, this source is found in the Reference section of the library. Each volume covers something different about colleges. For example, one volume will list colleges by degree and subject. Another volume is devoted to giving detailed narrative descriptions of colleges. However, one volume covers "Scholarships, Fellowships, Grants, and Loans." This volume has a few indexes that will help find the money.
Peterson's Scholarships, Grants, & Prizes. Peterson's is a well-respected company in the field of education. They have an online searchable scholarship database at their site. They continue to publish this very useful book allowing people to search by using a variety of indexes.
Scholarships, Fellowships, and Loans is a THREE volume set that is considered a "A Guide to Education-related Financial Aid Programs for Students and Professionals." The 37th edition is in book form, but the 38th, 2021, edition is promoted in online form. For many years, this has been a very good source for a variety of financial information as well as other forms of college information. Here is a quote from the book's website: "Written especially for professionals, students, parents, counselors and others interested in education, this annually updated resource provides sources of scholarships, fellowships, loans, internships, work study, and other education-related financial aid at all levels of study. Look for the section on federal financial aid for a quick summary of programs sponsored by the federal government. Also included is a state-by-state listing of agencies that users can contact in their home state. Five handy indexes help you quickly locate the information you need - Field of Study, Legal Resident, Place of Study, Special Recipient, Sponsor and Scholarship."
The Ultimate Scholarship Book lists scholarships based on: field of study, career, interests/hobbies, special circumstances, state of residence, military-related, ethnicity/race, religion, disability, membership, sponsor, and scholarship name. This is the latest description about the most recent edition: "Information on 1.5 million scholarships, grants, and prizes is easily accessible in this revised directory with more than 300 new listings that feature awards indexed by career goal, major, academics, public service, talent, athletics, religion, ethnicity, and more. Each entry contains all the necessary information for students and parents to complete the application process, including eligibility requirements, how to obtain an application, how to get more information about each award, sponsor website listings, award amounts, and key deadlines. With scholarships for high school, college, graduate, and adult students, this guide also includes tips on how to conduct the most effective search, how to write a winning application, and how to avoid scams."
Reference Service Press "began in 1977 with a single financial aid publication Directory of Financial Aids for Women, and now specializes in the development of financial aid resources in multiple formats." Following will be a list of the financial aid resources that this company publishes in book format. Although the subject of each book is different, the indexes in each book are very similar. Gail Ann Schlachter is one of a couple authors who have been involved with many of the following titles for many years. JUST when I think that I should take this list off this web page, I see that she is involved with UPDATING SOME of the titles on this list.
SOME of the following titles have been updated, but many of the titles have NOT been updated and provide old information. The older information may be helpful, BUT the information in the older books has NOT been updated.
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