Tips to Get Money for College 12: Use Internet Search Engines to Find Funds

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

Paulo grew up in Brazil. He traveled to the United States to study at a prestigious private university. He obtained scholarships using search engines and consulting with his college financial aid counselor. He still needed more money though. So, he used Google to identify several scholarships that paid for Brazilians studying in the United States. They gave him him an additional $15,000 each year for four years.

Tips for Using Internet Search Engines for Scholarships

Scholarship search engines specialize in finding scholarships. You may also use general Internet search engines to find scholarships and sources of financial aid. We will not enter into the war of search engines by recommending one over another. We will merely discuss how to use standard Internet search engines to find scholarships. A very few of the things we discuss will change depending on which search engine you use, but most apply to all.

A few tips will help you improve the number of results your search will generate. Rather than describe the tips in words, I will use actual examples. You may change the phrases to meet your own needs:

• “Scholarships for Brazilians studying in the USA” using quote marks generates one set of results leaving the quotes off will modify your results slightly
• Scholarships for Business Majors
• Financial aid for business majors
• Scholarships for business majors at University of Southern California
• Research grants for business majors
• Fellowships for counseling PhDs
• Financial aid for Californians studying at Boston College

These examples should give you ideas for using Internet search engines. Test you own ideas.

Be Aware

You should recognize that information found through these general search engines will include

• Millions of results that have not been screened or vetted
• Priorities based on search engine algorithms, not most applicable results
• Scams or false sources of financial aid
• Results with one or more of the words, but still unrelated to what you want
• Junk unrelated to you

Monday we share the Rieser Fellowship as a source of student financial aid for scientists

This blog will improve as you submit comments, questions, and experiences. We will answer your questions in future blog posts. Please submit your comments and questions so we can answer them.