When to look for college scholarships
How to Find Scholarships
hello welcome back to the grown up
millennial my name is Jessie this is the
first part in a three-part series on
scholarships so in my last video I
mentioned that I want 11 scholarships
but I had applied to over a hundred so
where does the person even find out two
scholarships that they qualify for
that's what this video is about we're
going to talk about how to find
scholarships to apply to so normally
when you ask your financial aid officer
or your college counselor what were you
talking to a big thing that they're
going to tell you is scholarship search
engines so this would include asta
web.com or cap XCOM now these aren't bad
but I'm not a huge fan of them so you
want to be really careful with them
they're great starting point but they
tend to give you a lot of sweepstakes
and in my experience sweepstakes or
waste of time because you so rarely win
anything there's not a lot in there
quick application usually they're like
five minutes you just put in your
personal information and they enter you
into a drawing I don't know anyone who's
want a scholarship through sweepstakes
on top of that they end up selling your
personal information all of them but a
lot of them to do and then you just get
flooded with spam emails and the chances
of you winning are so low so many people
are putting their name in for
sweepstakes so when you're using
scholarship search engines
I recommend avoiding the sweepstakes and
focus on scholarships where you write an
essay or you do a project something
where you can put in hard work to help
you rise above the rest and where
they're much less likely to sell your
personal information so scholarship
search engines you you're going to make
a profile and they're gonna help connect
you to scholarships that you might
qualify for the second one I think this
is really underutilized is go to your
financial aid office or your college
counseling office if you're in high
school is going to be a college and
career office if you're in college it'll
be your financial aid office a lot of
these offices if you look on the wall
you go talk to somebody they're going to
have local scholarships and local
scholarships are awesome normally they
only be like 250 500 bucks
the thing is though because they're
local very few people are applying to
them
there's only so many students in the
neighborhood and there's only so many
people students who have heard of them
so these are great you want to apply for
those small scholarships then not a lot
of people know about because the chances
of you getting it are so much higher
often times they only get a few
applications and just a student who
writes a legible coherent thoughtful
essay ends up getting the scholarship
again that's not for all of them but
it's really really common so I really
recommend going to your college
counselor going to your financial aid
office and seeing what local
scholarships are available in that same
vein a little bit different this won't
be the case at most high schools but at
your college both community college and
universities go ask if they have a
common application so for example in my
university my application to the
University was my first scholarship
application I didn't get any
scholarships that first year but I found
out that they had a common application
for dozens of scholarships for
continuing students and very few
students knew about this application so
I applied to it and I ended up getting a
scholarship that helped replace a ton of
money that I was losing from
scholarships that had ended so that was
awesome so really make sure go ask do
you have a common application do you
have a way to apply for more
scholarships because most students after
their first year stop thinking about
scholarships they go well Mara to here
don't be that student always keep
looking for scholarships so another
resource that I really like I went to
library and I picked this up is one of
these big old scholarship books now when
I was in high school and I would see
these they always seemed really
counterintuitive because like I I needs
money why am I going to pay $30 for this
book full of scholarships I don't even
qualify for most of them what I
discovered is that a lot of public
libraries including my own stock these
books and if they don't talk to your
librarian ask if they can buy this or
they can get it from another library
because these are awesome you don't even
need to get the most recent one this is
2015 my my local library want to stay up
to date but the one I got when I first
start applying scholarship
a couple years old the thing is most of
these scholarships are annual so just
look into it find a scholarship that you
qualify for write it down and then
google it
you're probably going to find it most of
these have applications online not all
of them don't most of them do and most
of them if they don't have an
application online at least have
information on how you apply online so
these are great literally the whole
thing is just filled with scholarships
with the exception of in the first few
pages normally it's going to give you
tips on writing essays how to apply
doing interviews I'm going to talk about
that more in my next two videos but
again these are great and in the back
there's going to be these indexes so for
example this is a military-related index
so if you're in the military or family
was in the military you can look through
that list of scholarships they're going
to be you're going to find a lot of
different populations that you might be
a part of that you didn't even realize
for example there was religious ones in
here I'm not religious but I found in
the religious index that there was a
scholarship for non-religious people so
I actually won that scholarship from the
Freedom From Religion Foundation so take
advantage of the populations you're in I
found scholarships for students whose
parents are firefighters or for tall
students yes there is a scholarship just
for being tall so that's the idea pick
up one of these books they're gonna find
you're gonna have a lot more of the
obscure scholarship to the smaller
scholarship so you don't necessarily
find on FAFSA web or capex or the ones
that are really really specific that
they don't put a category for you on the
scholarship search engines so pick up
one of these books find one it doesn't
have to be the one by this company I
know Kaplan does one I think College
Board does one really anyone will work
they're all pretty similar
the idea is go to your library pick one
up for a couple weeks
mark the ones you want make an Excel
spreadsheet whatever you need to do but
these are awesome but these are kind of
my little secret so the one other place
is to just google it now I'm going to
show you how to do that but most
students when they start looking for
scholarships they just Google
scholarships the thing is there are
thousands of scholarships literally
thousands of scholarships so you don't
want to just Google scholarships cuz
it's gonna get overwhelming is just
going to give you a bunch of scholarship
search engines so let's talk about how
to Google for scholarships and find
something that you might actually
qualify for so you want to start
thinking of groups that you would fall
under that might be awarded scholarships
and then start googling those
specifically so let's use an example for
myself I am a woman and I was studying
international relations in school so
let's just look up women international
relations scholarship we already get
some things that pop up so lots of
different options so open this up so you
will get here great so this is just a
list of tons of different scholarships
for women interested in anything
regarding international relations human
rights we got tons of options right here
so this is a great list that we found by
googling we got one if I was going to
College of William and Mary I'm not but
if I wanted to go I I had that option
now let's try something else I have a
friend she's just graduating high school
and I was doing a couple scholarship
searches for her she's a woman she's
black and she's going into the stem
field she's studying biology to be a
doctor so those are all really popular
scholarship awarding communities so
we'll check this out so we've got a list
right here something through the white
house check that out so you can just see
that there's tons of different options
for black women studying stem so this
has got a great list right here over at
the white house website you don't even
have to be this specific so say we drop
stem just look black female so you see
we still got lots of different options
where she doesn't even necessarily have
to study stem so you can do one
population to populations three
populations really mix them up try
different combinations and you'll find
different options so that is kind of how
you're going to use Google to look up
scholarships is you want it to be pretty
specific you want to take advantage of
the fact we
you want to use these specific
populations now for some groups is going
to be a little bit more difficult
particularly white male but that doesn't
mean you're out of luck so white men
have other populations that they're
still part of for example we have
military scholarships that's an option
or if you were in the Boy Scouts a Boy
Scout scholarships use usually tons of
those see right here National Eagle
Scout Association so you got academic
scholarship merit scholarships just for
being a Boy Scout so try to think of
what populations you're part of and
start googling those to find
scholarships you qualify for really
looking for specificity because you want
the population that's applying to get
smaller and smaller smaller and you want
to be a better and better fit for that
scholarship because that just increases
your chances of actually winning so that
concludes this video on how to find
scholarships the next video we're going
to talk about application tips to make
your scholarship application even better
so until then thank you so much for
watching and if you liked this video
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I thank you so much and thanks for
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