<p>I am pretty ignorant when it comes to this subject so bear with me. I'm going to begin my senior year of high school after this summer ends, but I am wondering if I should start looking into scholarships right now or wait until I actually begin my senior year. Does the school generally help you through this before you graduate?, or is it best just to search for scholarships on the internet and enter them on your own time? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated, and if I am in the wrong forum for this, sorry.</p>
<p>begin looking for scholarships now and make a scholarship table in excel for instance of all the scholarships you qualify and will apply. Include the name of the scholarship, the date it is due, the amount, which recommendations are required, if there is anything weird that is required and maybe even the essay questions. I applied to a lot of scholarships this year but I didn't start making this table until february and I can say that this is one of the BEST things you can do. Before that, I just had a folder of all the scholarships I qualified for and would just flip through it every once in awhile, which did not work well at all.</p>
<p>Begin looking for scholarships now on fastweb.com or archives from your school's scholarship website or if your school doesn't have one, from local high schools in your area. The local scholarships are your best bet. Know that the scholarships on fastweb are national scholarships and there is A LOT of competition for these and so the only ones on fastweb that you usually have a decent chance of winning are the ones where they give out A TON of awards like Dell, LOWES, Wal-Mart, etcetera. Usually don't even bother applying for the ones that only give out one or two awards.</p>
<p>What else. Don't be afraid to write essays. Once you start writing essays, you will see that a lot of scholarships use similar essays, mainly with these topics:</p>
<p>What kind of challenges have you faced in your lifetime?
How have you contributed to cultural diversity?
Have you ever felt disadvantaged, if so, how?
Why do you think you deserve this scholarship?</p>
<p>Also, you need recommendations. Your best bet is to get two faculty recommendations (one from teacher and another one from a counselor will be best since a lot of scholarships ask for a counselor rec) and one from a community leader.</p>
<p>Start looking for scholarships now because some have very early deadlines (October/November).</p>
<p>oh yeah, and be sure to file the FAFSA as soon as possible and keep a folder of all your financial aid and scholarship stuff:</p>
<p>scholarship applications
transcripts
copies of your SAT scores
Copy of FAFSA student Aid report
Copy of first 2 pages of your parents income tax form 1040
Copies of your recommendations (if your sources give you a copy)
All receipts from scholarship applications
letters from the scholarship people
color copies of a photo of you</p>
<p>^I'm pretty sure you don't need photos of yourself... unless you're applying to one of those beauty-pagent "scholarships" things.</p>
<p>yeah you usually don't
i just had three applications that said they wanted photos just in case you win they would like to be able to publicize.
i also had one that wanted a photo after I was chosen as one of the 10 finalists so they could publish it in their newsletter.
and then there's APIASF that asked for a photo after I was selected as a winner</p>
<p>^ how many scholarships did you get exactly?!</p>
<p>um haha, all the scholarships that I sent photos to I got btw</p>
<p>anyways, this year I applied to so many scholarships that I lost count, whenever I saw one that I would qualify for, I would put it into the excel thing that I was talking about, but I didn't do that until february. but my estimate would be 30+?</p>
<p>But I got my school's full tuition scholarship and another school scholarship (totatling 7200 a year) and 10 other private scholarships (totaling 13000). I'm still waiting for a few that haven't announced winners yet</p>
<p>Azn, Please Help Me With This, I Have An Inkling Of What To Do.</p>
<p>i'll answer any questions that you have if I can but pretty much I have given you all the advice that I can think of</p>
<p>now that I think of it, if you count my state's scholarship assistance application (OSAC- whice is like 170 scholarships in one even though I only qualified for less than 10), I would have applied to 40 something plus scholarships.</p>
<p>Just remember that if a deadline is REALLY close or if you have a scholarship due today for example and you haven't even started it yet, it is MUCH BETTER to BS the whole scholarship application than not do one at all. Some of my applications I thought I had no chance of winning because they were really low quality but I ended up getting them anyways.</p>
<p>If you are asked for an interview, it is likely they are all going to ask you the same questions:</p>
<p>What school are you going to next year?
What are you majoring in?
What are your future plans?
Why did you choose this major?
Talk about how your community service or how you contributed to your community?
... you get the point</p>
<p>Just before the interview do a little bit of research on the organization to see what is important to them and make sure that this comes across in your interview as being important to you also. Also make sure you know what you already displayed during your application so you don't repeat the same things in order to make you seem like a more interesting individual.</p>
<p>What you can also start doing right now is start working on a resume because a lot of scholarships require one.</p>
<p>Usually a scholarship resume has honors/awards, extracurricular activities and employment/community service.</p>
<p>However, your resume can also serve as a way to brag a little about your SAT scores, SAT subject test scores, AP test scores, class rank, and junior/senior year schedule if they are impressive (since some scholarships don't ask anywhere on the application for some/all of these)</p>
<p>I have practically NO community services at all. Bye bye scholarships...</p>