Scholarship Guide

Scholarships featured

Scholarships are additional forms of aid that help students pay for their education. They are reserved for students with special qualifications, such as academic, athletic or artistic talent. Awards are also available for students who are interested in particular fields of study, who live in certain areas of the country or who demonstrate financial need.

List School Scholarships: A scholarship is an award of access to an institution or a financial aid award for an individual for the purposes of furthering their education. A scholarship may be awarded based on range of criteria, which usually reflect the views or purposes of the donor or founder of the award. Generally, scholarships and fellowships are reserved for students with special qualifications, such as academic, athletic or artistic talent.

Scholarships are generally classified into three major groups: merit based, need based and ethnicity based.

• Merit-based Scholarships

These scholarships do not use financial need to determine the recipient. The beneficiary may be determined by students' athletic, academic, artistic or other abilities. The actual monetary value of some scholarships may be small, but the award is meant to motivate the student and promote the study of a particular subject. Some of the largest scholarships, however, are almost always merit-based.

• Need-based Scholarships

This is financial aid for which the student and their family's financial situation is a key factor in determining the recipient. These kinds of scholarships often cover all or part of the tuition and may even cover living-costs. Need based private scholarships often require that the awardees to be distinguished students.

• Ethnicity-based Scholarships

These scholarships require candidates are awarded based on race, religion, or national origin. After sorting the applicants based on their ethnicity, additional factors such as merit and special interests are taken into consideration to determine the final recipients.

Should you apply for scholarships? Scholarships are the best form of student assistance, because they never have to be repaid – unlike student loans. Student loans must be repaid, but they are made at a very low interest rate with a 6-month grace period before you have to begin repayment after graduation. Always look for scholarship opportunities first as there are thousands available – maybe even one specific to your achievements or course of study. Visit our resources to see the many free scholarship databases available online.

AllScholar.com is a free scholarship search resource for students, parents, and educators. AllScholar's free scholarship search tool offers simple, concise, and easy scholarship searches.

The FastWeb Scholarship is a popular free scholarship search site, with more than 25 million registered users. It is also the most frequently updated and provides automatic email notification of new scholarships that match the student's profile.

The Scholarships.com database has good coverage of awards and a fairly precise match, but some of the scholarship entries in the Scholarships.com database appear to contain old info rmation.

The College Board's FUND FINDER scholarship database lists scholarships and other types of financial aid programs from 3,300 national, state, public and private sources.

SRN Express is a free web version of the Scholarship Resource Network (SRN) database. The SRN database focuses on private sector, non-need-based aid, and includes info rmation about awards from more than 1,500 organizations.

The Scholarship Page is a free search resource for students looking to find scholarships.

Scholarship Experts helps students & parents to quickly and accurately identify sources of college scholarships to pay for college. We help both US and international students find scholarships to attend college in the USA.

Information and data collected by Top School .US Staff