Here are ten tips to help you with your scholarship search.
1. Start early
There is never such a thing as “too early” when you are searching for scholarships. The sooner you begin your search, the better chance you have at finding what you are looking for. That means more time to apply and more of a chance you will obtain scholarships.
2. Be broad
Don’t give in to the tendency to be too specific. Open up your horizons and search for things that may be of interest to you, however general it may be. You may be surprised at how many applicable scholarships you may find.
3. Stay motivated
Don’t give up. Looking for a scholarship is a treasure hunt, the more you look the more it will pay off so don’t stop looking if you don’t find what you are looking for at first glance. Scholarships are always changing and new scholarships always pop up.
4. If in doubt, apply.
It doesn’t hurt to apply so even if you think it’s not likely you will get the scholarship, you won’t know unless you try, so go for it!
5. Ask questions
If you have any questions regarding a scholarship, leave us feedback or shoot out an email and ask. Call the school or the organization offering the scholarship to get clarification about what they need or what they are looking for. You want to make sure you are supplying everything that you need to, without being excessive for the best chance.
6. Keep searching daily
Remember to make scholarship searching a part of your daily internet routine. Just like checking your email, run a few scholarship searches every day to see if there is anything new.
7. Stay organized
Make a checklist or spreadsheet of your scholarships. Note all of the scholarships you are interested in applying for, the documents or items needed to submit, date due, progress of your entry and date submitted.
8. Write a general scholarship essay ahead of time
If you write a general scholarship essay ahead of time, you can go back and customize the content for each scholarship with ease. That way you will not have to dread writing an essay for each and every scholarship.
9. Get extra copies of your transcripts
You will likely need to submit official transcripts for the scholarships so have a stack ready to go for your entry packets.
10. No scholarship is too small
Sometimes people overlook the smaller scholarships ($1,000 or less) because they seem petty. This is the biggest mistake you can make, it is still free money for your education, how can you say no to that? And these scholarships can add up if you can obtain several.
