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Grants, Scholarships, and MORE |
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College Grants and Scholarships Listed on the World Wide WebIf you want basic, general, overall information about college grants and scholarships, then please go to the Financial Aid Basics page. However, listed below, you will find a list of resources on the Web that will help you find grants, scholarships, and some loans for college. Many of the resources will list actual college grants 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. Most 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 free scholarship search 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. Definitely, the search services are NOT perfect. If you receive a list of grants, then probably many on the list will not apply to you. Hopefully, some will apply to you, but a majority of "hits" will 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 advertisements on the free scholarship services so read the pages carefully to make sure that you do not receive unwanted material. 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. We hope that the following Free Grant and Scholarship Search Services will present you with plenty of options: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. This site will not provide a search service, but this site will mention some very good places to start looking for grants and scholarships. Listed are sources of information by different criteria such as ethnicity, gender, financial status, geographic location, and more. Peterson's is a well-respected company that has been devoted to providing information about colleges, for decades. There is plenty of information on this site about different aspects of college and other forms of education, such as high schools and trade schools. FinAid!: the SmartStudent Guide to Financial Aid provides A LOT of information about financial aid and college. This excellent website will provide lists of college grants and scholarships. FastWeb is an EXCELLENT scholarship search service that is free. It is part of the Monster.com company. FastWeb is one of the more well-respected 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. This particular service allows you to choose criteria such as field of study, gender, ethnicity, age, country of origin, disability, medical condition, single parent, and much more. Scholarships.com is an excellent site to find out all kinds of information about college, especially financial aid. Once you are on their pages, review the links on the left side of the screen. 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. 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. SallieMae's scholarship service is free and you need to register. Up front, SallieMae says that their "privacy policy ensures that you will not receive unwanted emails or be subject to intrusive advertising." This organization is well-known and can be considered one of the "nation's leading provider of saving, planning, and paying for education programs." The search service can be located at http://www.collegeanswer.com/paying/scholarship_search/pay_scholarship_search.jsp Fresch Free Scholarship search is an excellent site to find out very good tips for searching for financial aid and then what to do when you find the appropriate grant. Finding news of a grant that you can apply for is just one of the steps in the process. Actually applying for that grant and convincing the organization or association to give YOU the money, is quite another part of the process. We feel that it would be well worth your while to check out the many links on this site. Michigan State University Libraries Grants for Individuals will list A LOT of resources devoted to providing college grants and scholarships for a variety of people. Free-4U.com will provide lists of college grants and scholarships as well as a free scholarship search database. Free-4U.com will list some scholarships that we have not seen elsewhere. Grants, Scholarships, and MORE presents Scholarships for Single Mothers, Scholarships for Diabetics, and Cosmetology Scholarships. Directories on the Web can be excellent sources of information for a variety of subjects, including college grants and scholarships. The following directories will list organizations that will cover grants and scholarships:
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