<p><em>waves</em> Hi, college financial aid administrator here. I’ve worked with some of my students to find out how to Google-search intelligently for private scholarships and apply for what they find. Here’s what we’ve found:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Google “______ community foundation”, putting in the name of your city or town for the . Do it again, putting in the name of your county instead of city or town. Do it a third time, putting in the name of your state instead of county. This set of search terms seems to be good at finding scholarships for students who live in your area.</p></li>
<li><p>Google " scholarship application PDF", putting in the name of your intended major for the ______. This only works if you’re pretty sure you want to major in that field, but of course you can keep doing it with different fields. This set of search terms seems to be good at taking you directly to the applications for scholarships, including the eligiblity requirements, so that you don’t get frustrated wading through a million web sites that make it hard to find their scholarship apps.</p></li>
<li><p>Keep in mind that any time a Google search turns up a scholarship for which you have to go to a web site ending in .edu, that’s almost certainly a scholarship that can be used <strong>only if you attend that school</strong>.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Other than that, the advice other folks have given above is really solid: The vast majority of scholarship aid DOES NOT come from this kind of search and application process. It comes from the schools you apply to. Focus on that.</p>