I need money for college! I’ve been to Fastweb, Scholarships.com, and any other place you can think of! I had a 4.0 GPA in high school, graduated as Salutatorian of my class, I did community service, held leadership roles in high school, and I’m an excellent writer. But when I applied for scholarships from these websites, I heard nothing back from anybody! I spent hours writing essays, filling out applications, to not even get a reply saying, “you didn’t get this scholarship.” I would rather hear a no than nothing at all, so I’ll at least know that someone read my essay or my application. So is there any place out there that offers real scholarships? Help! My tuition is nearly $35,000 a year!
April 17th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Well, did you look into any state specific scholarships? I applied for four in my state. Banks, and local institutions might have scholarships avaliable in your town, too. I’m planning on applying to a few fastweb.com scholarships as well… Not to sound obvious, but did you check when you were supposed to hear back from the organization? Did you turn them in on time? If yes, then there is nothing wrong with calling and say “Hi, I applied for your scholarship ____ number of days/months ago, and was wondering when I should be hearing about that.” As long as you don’t call obsessively, there’s no harm in asking. Also, if you don’t get enough of your financial need met, when the school year starts you can ask the school if there were any unaccepted scholarships/funds/grants that you would be eligible for or to apply for. Make sure you call your school about that $35K sum. Did you file the FAFSA? Is that your EFC? If it is, make sure to ask your school what their policy is on applying scholarships toward the EFC. And lastly, usually the school has scholarship, grant and loan information on their website in the financial aid section. Hope this helps, and good luck!
April 17th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Some credit unions offer scholarships for writing essays. Travis Federal Credit Union is one of them. You can find them on the internet at www.Travisfcu.org
Good luck.