Some Scholarship Contest Sites

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I have found some great scholarship contest sites and have them listed here. Win the contest – win a scholarship! 

 I have heard of some of these contests before. Some I have not heard of, so until I hear back about them, I don't know how they work. I wish you the best of luck if you decide to go for them. Let me know how it goes, and how you like each of these sites.

The Scholarship Hunter site:

http://www.scholarshiphunter.com/freesweepstakes.html

This site features a search by state, financial aid tips, search by major, and displays links to all kinds of sweepstakes and scholarship contests.

Poetry Contest Scholarships from Scholarships.com

http://www.scholarships.com/scholarship-poetry-contests.aspx

This includes the Ayn Rand Scholarship, Poetry Out Loud, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship (worth $10,000).

Poetry and Essay Scholarship contests

http://www.poetryscholarships.us/

There are many different scholarships listed here.

Know of some other good scholarship contests and sites? Please let me know so I can add them here. Thanks!

More great sites to help you find scholarships and grants

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I was surfing the internet today and ran across some really good articles online about finding scholarships and grants.

Here is one:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4721513_scholarships-grants.html
In the article, Doodlebabe, the author, explains that you should not be paying somebody to get scholarships and grants for you, if you can help it. I feel that is because you can find a lot of free help on the internet, such as the FastAid site, to help you find scholarships and grants for free.

Another great resource I want to list here again is the Fatomei site (also known as the Dr. Torres site). It is here: http://scholarships.fatomei.com/college-scholarships-graduate-fellowships.html. One reason I like this site is that it has a large database of many different kinds of scholarships that you can look up just by clicking a category.

The Financial Aid Podcast is another great resource. This great podcast has hints, tips, and also a free newsletter on their site. I highly recommend them. They are always timely and have new podcasts all the time. You can download the podcast in an MP3 file and play it on your computer or on a portable MP3 player too.

I hope you all have a great holiday!

Some other of my sites:
The Nontraditional Student website
The Nontrad blog
Nontrads on Twitter
Nontrads on Facebook

Come and visit anytime!

About Native American Scholarships

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I found a great article on the College Scholarships site today. It explains that in order to qualify for a Native American Scholarshp, an applicant must prove tribal membership with a CIB (Certificate of Indian Blood). This makes sense. You must also belong to a tribe that is federally recognized, the article explains.

But how to do this if you do not already have what you need? You may have to find out information from older relatives, and do some genealogy work. There are some good resources listed here to help you in your search. There is more and more information listed online today than ever before, so hopefully you will find pointers and help in order to do the work yourself and save money. Of course, if you do not have time, or just would rather somebody else did the work, there are professional genealogists that can help you, for a fee.

Once you find your tribal heritage, and have the documentation you need (birth and death records, for instance) you may need to fill out some paperwork and work with the tribe itself in order to document your family history and get your official papers that you need.

Then you will be able to send in your applications for Native American scholarships.


Find out More about Native American Scholarships:
College Grants for Native Americans
FinAid explains about Native American scholarships and grants
Eastern New Mexico University's Navajo Nation Scholarship
AAIA Scholarships
St. Paul Public Schools scholarship list and resources

Here are some good Genealogy Resources
Native American resource list
State Historical Society of Missouri list of resources
Native American Genealogy at the Native Languages site

Please send me your links or stories about finding out your Native American heritage and I will add them here.

About the Fulbright Program - the Fulbright Program helps students study abroad

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Be a Fulbright Scholar!

The Fulbright scholarship is an exchange program that allows students from the U.S. and other countries to study abroad. It is a famous program that started in the 1940's. Students travel to another country, and share their experiences at home when they return.

Both U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens can apply. It is a very prestigious award that students from all over compete for. Some Fulbright scholars come here to the U.S. to study.

I had a Fulbright teacher when I was in high school. She was truely gifted. Fulbright scholars come back to their home country with new ideas, insights, and a feeling that they have really accomplished something important.

Here are the names of some famous people that were once Fulbright Scholars:
1. Joseph Heller
2. Melissa Block
3. John Lithgow
4. Sylvia Plath
5. Renee Fleming
6. Thomas Pickering

Here are some links from the official Fulbright site:
Fulbright Journals (find out about life for Fulbright scholars in other countries)

Videos and podcasts written by Fulbrighters
Explore the entire Fulbright site
Which Fulbright grant is right for me?

Other scholarship resources can be found at the Nontrads site Scholarship page.

Later!

Other sources and info. for this article:
Mental Floss: 10 Fulbright Scholars
The Dept. of State Fulbright Pages
The University of California at Irvine Fulbright page 
VOA News Special English Fulbright info. page

The Scholarship Essay - some tips on how to write it successfully

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The dreaded Scholarship Essay... some tips to help.

Are you scared of applying for scholarships because you are dreading the essay section? Here is a short guide with some pointers by experts that will help as you tackle your scholarship essay.

#1. Be neat - make sure you make your essay match the guidelines given by each organization.

#2. Take your time. You don't have to finish your essay in one night. Take as long as you need to do it right.

#2. Be correct - check and double-check your essay after you write it, and get another pair of eyes to do that for you, too. Your mentor, your family, your friends - pick somebody who is good at writing to proofread your essay. He or she might find something you missed that you can fix before sending it in.

#3. Be specific - make your essay match the criteria that the organization specifies. Be sure to read all the instructions. Don't make your essays a "one size fits all" type that all seem the same. Each one should be completely different. In other words, make each essay directly apply to the group it goes to.

#4. Make sure you get your scholarship essay in on time. Double-check the due dates. Your essay could be thrown out if it gets there late. Allow extra time in the mail to make sure your college scholarship essay gets there when you want it to.

#5. Write in your own style - let your voice be heard. That is not to say to write in poor English. You still have to observe good grammar and use spell check (and see #2, above). But it's better than okay to be yourself. Scholarship committees are looking for people who are creative and original. Not TOO original, but definitely heads above the crowd.

#6. Back up, back up, back up. Make sure and save your essay every time you pause in writing it. Put a copy on a backup disk or online at a backup site. That way, if your computer has a problem, your scholarship essay will still be safe and sound. A great backup site to use (and it's free for most users) is MyOther Drive.

Want to learn more about how to make your scholarship essay the best it can be? Check out these great links:

Kay Peterson: Writing the Scholarship Essay (from the FinAid site)
From Owens Community College (Findlay, Ohio): Writing a Strong Scholarship Essay
Sample college essays - on the College Board site
Other Scholarship application tips - from the University of Maryland
Essay writing tips from Daytona State College
College Application Essays that will Get you Accepted by Christine Howell

Do you have a tip you would like to share? Add it in the comments, below.

Thank you!

___________________________

And here are some of my other websites and blogs -
You are most welcome to come and visit.

The Nontraditional Student website
The Nontrad blog
The Nontrad Yahoo group
Nontrads on Twitter 

November is National Scholarship Month

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A really good Fastweb Article 

about National Scholarship Month


I was over at one of my favorite scholarship search sites, Fastweb, today, and I noticed a great article there with this title (National Scholarship Month...) written by Mark Kantrowitz. In this article, Kantrowitz gives an overview of what a scholarship is, and what kinds of scholarships are available.

The reason that November was chosen to be the National Scholarship month was because it is the beginning of the main scholarship time, Kantrowitz explains. He also says that many different kinds of scholarships are available today, even unusual ones such as "duck calling or knitting with wool." Unfortunately, I am not proficient at those skills, but maybe a reader out there is!

I found this article because I recently learned that the websites Fastweb (which has long been one of my favorites) and another site, FinAid.org, are connected. So now I totally recommend both sites. Not only are they free, but they feature many articles, such as this one, that I like. They also have sections for students, parents, and educators, as well asother information that college scholarship and grant seekers need, like how to volunteer, how to find internships and jobs, and tons of other information too.

You can read the rest of the article I just read here: November is National Scholarship Month. Thanks, Mr. Kantrowitz, for a great article. I like it because it is upbeat and inspirational, and not too long or boring either.

Explore these sites further:
The FinAid Site
The FastWeb Site
The article: November is National Scholarship Month

Later! And good luck with your scholarship and grant search.

Betsyanne

Which search sites are the best?

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Here is some good information, and some reviews of scholarship sites. 

The question of the day: Which search sites are the best?

Here is a GREAT website that rates the following scholarship search sites:
Fastweb, Scholarships.com, Peterson's, College Board, Scholarship Experts, FindTuition.com, NextStudent, SRN Express, and BrokeScholar.

It is the Finaid website.

The site ranks these 9 sites for their recall, the percentage of relevant awards for each searcher that is in the search results, and their precision, which is the percentage of matches for the searcher. The results are listed in a chart that they title Scholarship Database Quality.

Here is the website page on the Finaid site that shows the results of their study:
http://www.finaid.org/scholarships/awardcount.phtml#NPSAS

Finaid.org gives Fastweb the highest score on their chart. The others range from 93/75 (percentages) for Scholarships.com, to the worst one which is SRN Express, with a score of 33/31.

This is a great study, and a super addition to what we know about scholarship and grant search sites. The page also features another pair of graphs indicating how actual college students paid for school.

Find out more about search sites:

Links:
The FinAid Scholarship Search page
The Fastweb site
Sean's Review of Scholarship sites from EdFund.org
Search sites recommended by UNLV
Glendale.edu's list of scholarship search sites
More reviews of different sites - from College Scholarships.org

My links:
The Nontrad page Scholarships and Grants links page 1
The Nontrad page Scholarships and Grants links page 2

The Nontrad site and blog
The Nontrad Yahoo group
The Nontrad forum

Great Scholarship and Grant site of the day

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Saturday, October 31, 2009

(Happy Halloween!)

Today I am listing the Dr. Torres Site, also known as the Fatomei Site.

The announcement on the Index page of this site says "Nationally Coveted College Scholarships and Graduate Fellowships."

This site lists MANY scholarships, fellowships, and grants. The first ones listed are the Category Links. Included here are Foundation Scholarships, scholarships for Native Americans, African Americans, Teachers, Internships, Engineers, Medical, Nursing, Biology, College AND Graduate School, and many more.

Be sure to scroll down the first 3 columns here to get to the Dr. Torres links. These links were just updated on 10-25-09.

After their category links, there are single links, describing many scholarships by name or founation. These include the Morris Udall Foundation, the U.S. Departent of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, and even the White House.

I think that this site is definitely worth a look. Let me know what you think of it, and whether these sites yield up a scholarship or grant, too. It would be great to know I helped with this posting.

Later!

The Find Scholarships and Grants Blog

LINKS:

The Dr. Torres Site (Fatomei)

Two sites for shaking the scholarship and grant money tree

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A money tree... Everyone wants one.

And today, money trees are NOT around every corner. But there is a way to get money if you want scholarships and grants. The trick is to find these scholarships and grants without having to pay money for the privilege.

Hi, everyone! This is my very first posting here. I am very glad you are here.

Why I am starting this blog

The reason I am starting this blog is because I personally want to research and find scholarships and grants. Plus, I know with the economy right now, students of all kinds need all the help they can get! I think a good idea would be to see if I can go back to school and not wind up with another student loan to pay.

I am going to list a few REALLY GOOD websites to get this blog going, and point people in a good direction to get some GREAT scholarships and grants to help them go to school, whether it is going to high school, to get a GED, or going to college, university, graduate school or trade school.

The Nontraditional Student site
and Scholarship Page

I have a website for nontraditional students, and a Scholarship Page there. I will be adding to it as I learn about even more scholarship and grant sites. In case you didn't already know, a nontraditional student is a student who is going back to school after a break, or who is not the "standard" student who goes to school right after high school, and has no more than a part-time job. Often, these students have family responsibilities too. They are a growing component of students in many different kinds of schools.

Here is the link: Scholarships Page One. I think you will really like it. I have a link to the official FAFSA site (great to do first...), Dr. Torres' Database of Scholarships, Grants, the Fresch site, the Financial Aid Podcast, and more. These sites listed here are all free of charge to join and find scholarships and grants with. I will be writing about all of these links in future postings.

The Fastweb site

Another terrific site for scholarships is Fastweb. It offers information about high school through college scholarships. A blurb on their page says, "1 in 8 Applicants Win Scholarships!" I think this is a very good percentage. They also have a "Jobs and Internships" section. Everyone knows that having an internship or volunteering can often help people with their resumes or even help them get a job down the road sometimes. So this is a great addition to their site.

I hope you really like these sites. Come back to learn about more sites and even NEW scholarships and grants here on the Find Scholarships and Grants blog.

I am very glad you came here! Please let me know what you would like to see on this blog, and what research I can do to help you find scholarships and grants. Thank you!

This posting's links:
The Nontrad Scholarship Page One
The Fastweb Site