Tips to Get Money for College 3: Trim Your List to Realistic Opportunities

Saturdays we share tips or cautions to facilitate getting scholarships or avoid problems

Dee Dee attended our scholarship workshop and immediately started using the search engines. She felt overwhelmed after completing five search engines. Her combined efforts listed more than 600 scholarships. She couldn’t comprehend where to start. They ran together in her mind. One of our coaches showed her how to take just 15 minutes a day to review and trim her lists. She soon had her list narrowed to 178 real possibilities. She prepared her reusable materials and earned $120,000 in scholarships.

First Generate as Many Possibilities as You Can

We encourage students, whether youth or adult, to generate as many scholarship possibilities as you can. To do so, you click all the things that you have done as you complete the search engine profiles. If you played basketball, click it. If you see a club, join it, then click it. Each item you click adds another possibility to your list.

We encourage you to avoid editing yourself as you progress. Follow your initial reaction and click as many as may apply. Use more than one search engine. Yes, some of the results will overlap, but the lists will also add new scholarship opportunities.

Second Trim Your List to Real Possibilities

Not all of the scholarship opportunities listed will be strong possibilities for you. Some will be tentative at best. Some will not be close. You will need to eliminate the weak ones, to focus on the strong ones. It can be overwhelming unless you break it down into easy to follow steps:

• Set aside 15 minutes a day
• Open the list of one of your search engines
• Click on one of the scholarships
• Review the qualifications listed in the summary (if there is one)
• Follow the link to the actual scholarship page and review the qualifications
• Go back to the list and either
  • Delete or discard it if it will waste your time
  • Save or favorite it if you perceive that you could earn it

Tuesday we will review the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)