Government Scholarships

• The U.S. Department of Education maintains an Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which runs a massive financial aid program for college students. In 2010, FSA distributed over $31 billion in grants to students, including more than $29 billion from the Pell Grant program. The federal government awards grants on the basis of financial need. Look into their website at studentaid.eg.gov to see whether you meet their eligibility requirements.
  
  

Scholarships Suited to Your Interests, Strengths and Means

• It makes sense to consider scholarships that relate to you. For example, if you want to go to college to study journalism, look into scholarships for journalism. Scholarship websites like Fastweb make it easy for you to search for scholarships by topic. Private scholarships are awarded for many things, including extracurricular activities, areas of academic interest, good grades, family background, cultural background and financial need. By applying for scholarships that relate to you, you can be a more competitive candidate.
  
  

Scholarships at Your College

• Most universities and colleges run their own financial aid program and provide scholarships to students, usually on the basis of financial need, and sometimes on the basis of academic merit or other factors. Check with your college's office of student financial aid.
  
  

Big-Dollar Scholarships

• One thing about scholarships is that they tend to be smaller than your total college expenses. Thus, depending on how much grant money you need, you will probably have to apply for several distinct scholarships. To reduce this workload, look for scholarships that offer larger award values. For example, a scholarship for $250 is helpful, but you'd need six of them to equal one $1500 scholarship, and you would have to do the paperwork and any essay questions for each of them. It may help for you to write a budget of your total anticipated costs for college, and use this to guide your decision on which scholarships to apply for.
  
  

Less Competitive Scholarships

• You may have heard that billions of dollars of scholarship money goes unclaimed each year. There are no formal statistics tracking this, but it is true that each year many scholarships do go unclaimed. This can be due to low publicity or lack of qualified applicants. If you're in heavy need of scholarships, look for ones like these that will attract fewer competitors. The basic idea here is that, with fewer people competing for a scholarship, you will be more likely to win it. Some websites, like unclaimedscholarships.us, attempt to track unclaimed scholarships. Also, ask around your community to see if there are any scholarships close-at-hand.