Many potential college students don't end up attending university due to a
lack of money, however there are thousands of college scholarship programs
available. Here is a list of the most common types of college scholarships
that students can apply for:
Private organizations like the Rotary, Knights of Columbus
Corporate awards, such Microsoft or General Foods
Employee awards from your parents' employers
College-specific awards from endowments
Athletic awards and not just football!
Union funded scholarships
Military & military family scholarships
Academic scholarships
Departmental awards, such as the College of Science, and so forth.
College scholarships awarded by the college that a student is attending are
subject to strict terms of acceptance. This type of college scholarship is
constantly re-evaluated throughout the length of the course that the student
is funded for and can be withdrawn if the student fails to keep to the
agreed terms.
An athletic scholarship is fairly self-explanatory but this type of college
scholarship is probably the hardest for a student to obtain. There are
hundreds of thousands of highly gifted athletes from a range of sports every
year that apply for an athletic college scholarship and the numbers awarded
are extremely low. It is worth bearing in mind that only the top flight
schools will offer an athletic college scholarship.
The academic scholarships are one of the few that do not actually require
the student to apply for them. This is because the college normally awards
an academic scholarship based on the college application alone. Obviously,
the very nature of an academic scholarship means that a student will require
outstanding academic potential to be offered a full academic college
scholarship and it is more common for a particle college scholarship to be
awarded.
A departmental scholarship is most commonly awarded by a specific department
of a college to either attract or retain students for courses run by that
particular department. The individual department will provide information as
to whether they offer any type of special scholarship or not.
There are many private organizations that offer some form of partial college
scholarship. These often depend on the area that a student lives in but
national organizations may also offer a student a college scholarship but
the competition for these can be fierce.
On the other hand, many corporations actually have a college scholarship
program but fail to award them because of a lack of applicants. The
corporations may offer a college scholarship to students to attract them
into the particular line of work that the corporation is in or simply to
offer students in their community the chance to attend college.
Unions have a large amount of money allocated to a college scholarship fund.
These are usually aimed at students who are going to enter a field of study
related to the type of union.
Finally, the various branches of the military all have an extensive college
scholarship program. A military college scholarship is often extremely
generous but is awarded in exchange for a pre-agreed length of service after
graduation in the particular branch that sponsored the student.
So, get to work! Find that scholarship, and while you are at it, use the
information on sites like:
Kaplan's Guide to Paying for College
Scholarship Experts.com
FastWeb!
Simple Tuition
The Scholarship Zone
