How To Avoid The #1 Scholarship Searching Mistake

What college bound high school student does not want to win scholarships? I assure you, it can be done! You need to think “outside the box” and take a different path than that of your peers when searching for scholarships. Your main sources of competition are your fellow students. When it comes to finding scholarships, why would you do just what they do and find the same scholarships to apply for?

It is so easy to search for college scholarships on the internet. Type in a few words, click, and BAM, you have an extensive list of scholarships to choose from. Finished searching, right? WRONG! Learn how this is a mistake that every high school student makes and why…

Since the explosion of the internet many years ago, high school students have excelled at using online sources to find college scholarships. This may seem like an easy, wonderful way to find and apply for scholarships, but searching for scholarships this way is only a very small part of how to find and win college scholarships. Students assume that they are finding all the scholarships out there by entering “scholarships” into a search engine and clicking on the links that appear. It is a huge mistake for high school or college students to use only the internet to find scholarships!

There are so many resources in addition to the internet out there for students to tap into when beginning their quest to find and WIN scholarships. There are books that list thousands of scholarships and categorize them by the students’ interests, intended college major, race, club affiliation, and so much more. Often times, these scholarship books have scholarship opportunities that are not found online! These books come out with new versions each year, with information that is often times much more up to date than online websites.

Besides the big scholarship listing books, there are many scholarship opportunities found in the student’s high school counselor’s office and a little know fact is that you don’t have to be a student at that high school to apply for these scholarships. There are also state sponsored scholarships, university sponsored scholarships, and lots of other ways to find scholarships.

How did I discover this information? When my own son was a senior in high school, I went through the process of finding and applying for scholarships with him. We utilized the big scholarship listing books and as a result, he won over $20,000 in college scholarships! From the books, we were able to find scholarships none of the scholarship searching websites found for him yet signed up for every single online scholarship searching website that we could find. We used all the scholarship searching sources that you read about here and even more that I did not mention.

As the scholarship checks kept coming in the mail and I shared my methods with my family and friends, I was told over and over to publish my methods to help others win scholarships. These methods can be found at http://www.how2winscholarships.com. Get serious about winning scholarships and don’t do what everyone else is doing. “Think outside the box” and increase your chances of winning college scholarships today!

You can learn exactly what you need to win scholarships . Visit How To Win Scholarships to get free tips and scholarship searching advise!

The Secret to Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay

You have your scholarship application carefully filled out. Your letters of recommendation are collected and your scholarship resume is ready. The last thing to do for your scholarship application packet is to write the winning essay. How do you decide what to write about? Where do you start? Is there a secret to writing a scholarship essay that will help you be picked by the judges to win the scholarship money?

The first thing you need to understand is the point of the scholarship essay. The essay is a way for the scholarship judges to get to know YOU. They want to learn more about you than your name, GPA, ACT/SAT score, date of birth, etc… By writing the essay, you are able to share your thoughts, opinions, and feelings on the essay subject. Don’t start your essay with, “My name is ___________ and I attend _________ high school”. They already know this because it is easily found on your scholarship application.

To get the attention of the judges (who possibly have thousands of essays to read), start your essay with a compelling statement. Grab their attention right away and give them the desire to want to read your essay right through until the end, rather than skim it or toss it in the trash after the first few paragraphs. How do you do this? Think about the subject of the essay, decide what your opinion is, and then tie it into something that you’ve actually lived and firmly believe in. For example, to answer the question, “How will this scholarship money help you?” you can start with “I love to sleep in, but for the last year I have dragged myself out of bed each Saturday morning so I can get down to my local children’s hospital to read stories to the sick children who are patients there…” Then you can go on to explain how much you want to be a doctor and the scholarship money would help you pay for college and bring you one step closer to this dream.

By writing your essay, you are able to make yourself real to the judges. You know that you are more than a name on a piece of paper and now is the time to prove it. Help the judges use their imaginations to see you in their minds by writing with lots of real life situations, heartfelt emotions, and descriptive words. Use tools like the thesaurus to make your writing come alive and be remembered by the judges. Tell the truth and never lie in your essays. Write your own essay and do not let your parent write the essay for you. Remember, scholarship judges have read a TON of essays and can easily spot the ones that are not student-written, stretch the truth, and want to win so badly that they will say anything to make themselves look better than the other applicants.

Scholarship essays are a way for the judges to get to know YOU on a deeper level. When you draw them in from the beginning of your essay, tell the truth, and write from your heart, your chances of winning the scholarship money are much greater. To win scholarships, you need to learn how to create a scholarship application that gets noticed by the judges out of all the other applicants. Visit http://www.how2winscholarships.com to learn this method, find free scholarship tips, and win free money for college.

Looking to find a way to win scholarships, then visit www.how2winscholarships.com to find the best advice on how to win free money for college.

Win College Scholarships With These 5 Tips

Winning college scholarships is not just about having a good G.P.A. and being the student body president. The key to winning scholarships is to do what most of the other applicants are NOT doing. Average students can win scholarships and all it takes is a few tips to get you started.

The first scholarship winning tip that any student should follow is to not limit your scholarship searching to the internet. There are a TON of sources out there where will you find thousands of scholarships and many of them will never be found online. This means that most students will never apply for them and your chances of winning are greater. Don’t do what everyone else is doing and you will improve your chances of winning right from the start!

Should you apply for big or little scholarships? The next tip for winning scholarships is to apply for every scholarship that you qualify for. Don’t just apply for the big ones. The little ones (for example, $500) do add up if you win several of them! Apply for big and little scholarships and do not let the amount to be won become the deciding factor.

Don’t be afraid to apply for need-based scholarships. Need-based scholarships are those that look at your income (or your parents) as one part of the process to decide if you deserve to win the scholarship. Some need-based scholarships consider anyone with an income level below $100,000 to be needy! Don’t skip over need-based scholarships just because you think your parents make too much money! You never know what income levels they consider “too much” to be qualified to apply for their scholarship. If you can’t find the income requirements in the application instructions, go ahead and apply.

Hype up any and all community service hours you have performed in the last four years. Scholarship judges love to award money to students that have shown the desire to help others. Even fun volunteer hours like coaching a smaller sibling’s tee ball team will impress the judges and give you many ideas when it comes to writing the popular essay: How have you contributed to society? You can write about how fun it was to share your gifts with younger kids and how it made you feel. Don’t have any community service hours? Start NOW. You’ll be amazed at how many you can rack up in just a few short months.

These five tips will get you on your way to learning how to win college scholarships, but the very best tip is to use the method that I developed to quickly get your applications noticed by the judges. Using my method, I helped my own son win over $20,000 in private college scholarships. I was told by scholarship judges that the way my son’s application was presented made them notice it right away. It stood out and they knew immediately that he was the one they were going to pick to win their award.

If you truly want to win college scholarships, you can learn about my method by going to http://www.how2winscholarships.com. I will teach you what it takes to get your scholarship applications noticed by the judges. Scholarship deadlines are coming closer each day. Don’t wait! You CAN win free money for college and I will help you each step of the way.

M. Matthews helped her own son win over $20,000 in college scholarships and go to college for free. discover her method of putting together a unique scholarship application package by visiting http://www.how2winscholarships.com

How To Win The Scholarship Game

Winning college scholarships is much like playing a game. Your opponents are other students that would like to win as much as you do, maybe even more than you do. What you need to do is learn how to make your scholarship applications stand out by putting together a scholarship application that makes the judges sit up and take notice.

Picture this. Several scholarship judges are sitting around a big table with tall stacks of scholarship applications directly in front of them. Each application is piled on top of another, with staples or paper clips holding the letters of recommendation, high school transcripts, application forms, and all the other materials that the directions specified in the scholarship requirements. As each judge takes a scholarship packet and begins to read through them, papers get shuffled. Quite often, as pages are being passed from one judge to another, paper clips slip off of the packets and materials slip to the floor. One judge rescues one such page and looks at it closer. Where is the name? Which scholarship packet did this page fall from? He sees no name, just a typed essay. Into the trash it goes. There are many many more to read.

In the middle of reading an essay, one judge looks up and tosses it, and the rest of the application packet, into the trash. Too many words; 500 words or less means 500 words or less. Not 600, not 502, just 500 or less.

Another judge is reading through an application and has to stop and wipe the ink smudges off so that he can make out the student’s hand written information. He tries for a split second, shrugs, and then throws the whole scholarship application and all the materials into the trashcan. Now are you starting to get the picture?

A judge who has been quickly skimming through his pile of applications suddenly stops and is compelled to take a closer look at the next application packet in the pile. It is neatly arranged in a shiny, black folder. It has the name of the applicant and the name of the scholarship typed on a label on the outside of the folder. He opens up the folder and can’t help but smile as he notices the wallet-sized picture of the student taped neatly to the inside flap of the folder. As he pulls out the required documents, he sees that each one is neatly labeled with the student’s name, address, and phone number. All documents are in the order in which the scholarship rules requested. No material is missing. Also included is a neatly typed scholarship resume. This resume shares the student’s academic success as shown by awards received, G.P.A, class rank, and more. It also documents and explains his part-time job requirements, volunteer and community service hours, and is clearly labeled with the student’s name, phone number, and address. There is not a wrinkle, rip, fold, or tear in this scholarship application packet.

Someone really wants to win this scholarship and has taken the time to show it. The whole application is easy to read, in the correct order, not missing any required documents, and just feels different from all the rest.

This judge stops what he is doing, clears his throat loudly, and proudly tells his fellow judges that he has found the scholarship winner!

Could that be you or your daughter or son? You can be the judge. In order to win the scholarship game, you need to learn how to make the application clearly stand out from ALL the others. Find out now what you need to do to be a scholarship game winner!