Finding College Scholarships

Paying for college can be a real struggle, both in the short term and the long term. Families are often incapable of meeting the expected family contribution for college or graduate school tuition, and terms for tuition payment can often change every year. The most commonly prescribed method for dealing with paying for college, student loans, are burdensome in their own right.

Thousands of dollars in student loans can land college graduates in debt for decades, might accrue thousands of dollars in interest and won't be subject to the debt relief measures afforded to most individual debts in the event of bankruptcy.

What can be done, then, to mitigate the financial struggle of college tuition? The answer is surprisingly simple: aggressively pursue college scholarship funding. A shocking amount of independent college scholarship funds either go unclaimed or are only partially claimed by college students every year. In nearly every case, the problem isn't so much that would-be students are unable to qualify for the scholarships terms or conditions, it is simply that these would-be students don't know where or how to apply for the specific scholarship.

A few simple steps can greatly increase the chances you, as a potential student of family struggling to put a child through school, can acquire meaningful college scholarship funding:

1) Check with the schools of your choice about general scholarships applicable to all students as well as specialized scholarships for students of different characteristics. Private colleges universities in particular are often interested in wooing students from different socio-economic backgrounds or emphasizing diversity of the student body.

To that end, many colleges and universities will provide scholarships that are specifically available to people with your characteristics or background.

2) Check with the individual department (academic or athletic) in which you or your child intends to study or participate for performance-based scholarships. Individual departments are typically distributed funding for a specific number of scholarships that can be distributed to people of their choosing. Art, drama and music departments frequently award significant chunks of funding to students who intend to participate in their programs every year, and sports teams are often structured similarly.

3) Check for independent, local, community-centered organizations that might offer scholarships. It's easy to get distracted by national contests held by large corporations for college scholarships.

While the prize for these contests is usually large, the competition is fierce and the likelihood of the winner being picked on merit is slim. The largest chunk of unclaimed scholarship money in the United States actually comes on the local level, where small organizations intending to support their community slide under the radar.