Academic Scholarships - Best Practices to Acquire Them

Have you tried your employer?  My employer provides a rather large scholarship to about 10 college students per year.  My oldest son received a non-institutional scholarship ($3K) both his freshmen and junior years that saved us many thousands.   All he had to do was apply for the scholarship, write an essay, and wait.

Good luck!

You might be able to find an academic scholarship related to the student's field of study.  A non-profit STEM thinktank giving out scholarships for engineering majors, for instance.  Or a large media outlet funding journalism scholarships.  Try googling "field of study" + scholarships, example: journalism scholarship.

Ryno, my oldest is at Purdue.  Each academic department offers scholarships directly from the school every year.  They are competitive and many require some type of essay as well as meeting additional requirements.  There is a website that lists out the scholarships for each department.  There is an application deadline for each scholarship and I think its coming up soon for most of them.  Depending on his field of study he may qualify for some of them.  

The one thing we did find out, is it will take at least two semesters at Purdue building up an academic history before many of the scholarships will consider a student.  The scholarship reqs won't list this, but my son was able to talk to the person who controls the scholarship process for his course of study.  She filled him in on way he was passed over his first year after transferring and told him to reapply the following year.

BTW, I would add, don't let the unlisted two semester unwritten rule stop you from applying.  My son bumped into advisor at a non-academic event and she knew his name from this scholarship application.  Its good to get your name in front of them sooner rather then later.

Good tips.  Thank you all!

Check your bank, your credit union, all of your utilities because there are often scholarship opportunities for children of customers. Use an internet search to look for scholarships with this month's application deadlines, next month's etc. Use any high school guidance counselor web site that you can find online, public or private. GCs update scholarship pages all of the time and many scholarships are for current college students.