It is now officially spring and it is also the height of scholarship season. Many, many scholarships are due before the end of April, so seniors have plenty to do!
Hopefully if you are a future graduate, you have not put off scholarship searching until now! It is so much more effective to begin looking toward scholarships during the Sophomore and Junior years. That way, when Senior year is upon you, you already know where the scholarships are and have worked to have abundant activities to list on all the scholarship forms.
For those of you that are graduating in a few months and have only just begun to look for scholarship opportunities, don't give up hope! You are going to have to work really, really hard to find and apply for scholarships! Here are some things you might want to begin doing immediately:
- Call the Financial Aid office of any college you are considering. Find out what scholarship opportunities are available at each school, request scholarship application forms and begin working on those.
- Check to see if there are scholarship opportunities in your local communities. Many clubs and organizations offer scholarships to local students every year. Watch your local newspaper for announcements of scholarships. Keep your eyes open and you will find many that you can apply for.
- If you haven't kept records of things you've done during high school, you might want to take some time to jot down as many things as you can remember....organizations you've been involved with, contests you've participated in, people you have helped. These things may be used on lots of scholarship applications. My HomeSchool2College book encourages parents and their students to keep track of all these things during high school so that you don't have to depend on memory for everything over a four year period.
- It's getting late, but there may still be time to file a FAFSA!
These are only a few of the things that can be done, but will be an excellent place to begin. Good luck in your search!
