Scholarship Search Secrets

Scholarship Search Secrets Overview

In this free guide, you'll find today's top secrets for finding college scholarships at little or no cost to you except your time.

Managing Your Financial Aid Office Relationship

How to maximize one of your schools' best, most underutilized resources for finding information about all types of financial aid.

Basic Scholarship Search Tips

Basic scholarship search tips including how many scholarships to apply for, and small versus large scholarships.

Scholarship Portfolio

Have a standard biographical profile of yourself, plus answers to common questions in typical lengths for essay-style questions of 250 words, 500 words, 750 words, and 1,000 words.

More Helpful Tips

More helpful tips to maximize your college scholarship search.

Avoiding Scholarship Scams

There is no shortage of con artists and scams when it comes to paying for college, and spotting them early can save you money and heartbreak.

The FAFSA

The free hour-long application that can unlock all kinds of scholarships, grants, and financial aid.

Tools of the trade

You'll need a series of tools to maximize the power of your scholarship search. Having these on hand and set up in advance will save you time and effort.

Build Your Personal Brand

Establishing your personal brand will help you write more focused, more concise scholarship essays and have better college admissions interviews, increasing the likelihood of getting additional free money.

Search the Web for Scholarships

Search engines such as Google are the best tools available to you for finding scholarships. However, there are a lot of secrets in terms of getting the best results out of the search engines.

Use Magic Words

Magic words are words you use in your Web searches that are used less conversationally, and so when you search for scholarships with those terms, you'll probably get better results.

Scholarship Deadlines

Start applying to Scholarships during your sophomore year in high school, and make the promise and commitment to yourself to apply for one scholarship every day once you get a schedule set up.

Scholarship Alerts

What if there was a tool that could search for you everyday, every minute, keeping an eye on everything, and alerting you when new scholarships based on your needs became available? There is such a tool, its called Google Alerts, and it's free.

Hunt for Scholarships with Friends

You've heard the expression two heads are better than one; this is doubly true with scholarship hunting.

Create Your Own Scholarship

If you find that existing scholarships can't fit the bill, and you don't want to rely exclusively on student loans to pay for college, then why not start your own scholarship?

Scholarship Search Wrap-Up

There are other ways to make the most out of the internet when it comes to hunting for money for college, it is critical to maximize your chances and take advantage of the resources out their.

To get a head start on your financial aid, visit these useful Student Loan Network resources:

• FAFSA tips and tutorials at FAFSAonline.com
• Free quarterly scholarship drawings at ScholarshipPoints.com
• Federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
• Federal parent loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
• Private student loans at AlternativeStudentLoan.com
• Graduate student loans at GradLoans.com
• Daily free financial aid internet radio at FinancialAidPodcast.com
• Free financial aid monthly newsletter at FinancialAidNews.com
• Consolidate your student loans at StudentLoanConsolidator.com