What Are Scholarships And Where You Can Find Them -

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What Are Scholarships And Where You Can Find Them

by Majenica Moles

So, you are in high school, and thinking about college. You have no idea what you are doing, or how you are going to pay for it. You can always take out student loans, but I wouldn’t do it if you can avoid it. They will haunt you forever! The best way to go, is to apply for scholarships. What is a scholarship? It is a monetary award to help pay for school, that you do not have to pay back.
Scholarships are the best forms of financial aid you can get, because you don’t pay them back. Loans are required to be paid back. Loans also come with interest that has to be paid. Take it from me, you don’t want loans. I didn’t know this when I started college back in 2005. I was naive, and just went head first into it. Now, with accrued interest, I’m around $100k in debt. It’s horrible. I was never given much advice in high school about paying for college. I think it was just assumed that your parents would pay your way. What they don’t take into account is the fact that not all parents have the financial ability to pay for college. That was the case with me. I ended up not going to college until I was married, with children. In hindsight, I know that it would have been more advantageous to use scholarships and grants, but I didn’t even know these were a thing.

Where Can I Get A Scholarship?

Scholarships can be found all over, but a good starting point is Fastweb. They have a scholarship finder tool, that will help you find the ones you may be qualified for. A few scholarships that you can check on are: Rusty Tweed, Mark Alvarado, and JMD Furiture. These are just a few that you can apply for. You can also apply for: Chrissy Weems, Nationwide Debt Reduction Services, All Year Cooling, and Associates Home Loan. You can search the web to find scholarships, and potentially end up with enough to pay for your entire schooling. Wouldn’t that be nice?
While searching the web, you can find information about other ways to help pay for college, as well. One thing that I told my son, was to get a job, save money, and pay cash for each class. Even if he has to take one class at a time, it will still be better than loans and going into debt. Check your local community colleges out. You can earn an Associate’s degree from there, and if the career field you want requires more, than you can transfer to another university that offers a Bachelor’s. By getting your Associate’s from a community college, you are going to save a ton of money. You can generally only end up paying about $6k total per year, versus paying $20k+ at more expensive colleges. It really just makes financial sense to use a lower cost college, if at all possible.