Searching for Scholarships: Finding Ways to Pay for College

By Joe Messinger, CFP®

February 21, 2024

5 min READ

The cost of college today is a reach for most families–to say the least! Families can make the cost more manageable by understanding how to be an educated consumer. The ideal solution is finding ways to pay for college using other people’s money. Scholarships or “gift aid” are free money for college based on your student’s qualifications–their need, talents, traits, or interests. The giver of the scholarship determines what qualifications are required to receive their money.

Have the College Money Talk

First things first, if you haven’t already done so, you need to have the “College Money Talk” with your young adult so they understand the ways to pay for college and just how important scholarships are to cutting the cost of college and keeping their student loans in check. As parents, we don’t always teach our young adults personal finance, yet we ask them to make one of the largest buying decisions of their lives at 18.

Students want to be a part of the money conversation, they just don’t know how. Scholarships are one part of the college-funding puzzle that they can 100% have an impact on. If you want some step-by-step help when it comes to talking with your child, check out our blog post.

Have a Scholarship Search Gameplan

Finding free money for college will take some investigation on your part, but thanks to the internet and other resources that we will cover here you can find your solution. But you must have a game plan. You can’t control how many scholarships you will be awarded, but you can control how many you apply for.

In our experience, the hard part isn’t finding scholarships to apply for; it’s motivating your high school senior to do them on time! Put yourself in their shoes for a second. They just completed all of their college applications and essays, and the last thing they want to do is more “paperwork” on top of their school work. Totally understandable!

Work with your student to set a realistic goal of applying for at least 6 to 8 scholarships that are a good match. This helps to set them up for success without pushing them too hard, or risking scholarship-application burnout.

Start Local

When beginning your scholarship search, start locally. The easiest place to start is with your high school guidance counselor. They have the inside track on applicable scholarships for you, particularly the smaller, local scholarships — which can really add up! These local, private scholarships often aren’t listed on large databases, so it pays to have a conversation with your counselor who is in the know.

Local community groups are also a great resource for finding scholarships. Here in Central Ohio, you can check out the Columbus Foundation or I Know I Can — two examples of excellent local community resources.

Search those groups you and your family are part of. Churches, employers, clubs, and societies are all looking to help students attain their college dreams and want to help financially.

Check with the College

Visit the college’s website and talk to the college’s financial aid office. Call, email, or make an appointment. Financial aid officers want you to attend their school, so they will try to help you find scholarships if they can.

We want to make a special mention here about colleges and the merit money they award to students. In our previous blog, we talked extensively about how some colleges have money to give to students who meet certain academic criteria with grade point averages and test scores. Colleges are looking for the best students, and they are prepared to provide scholarship money to get them.

Seek out those schools that award scholarships to every student who meets a specific set of academic or merit criteria. Believe it or not, several schools in the south (University of Alabama, University of South Carolina, University of Mississippi/Ole Miss, to name a few) offer great merit awards because they want to bump up their average ACT scores for new students.

You may want to consider extra test prep services because the value of a higher ACT score often translates to more scholarship money from the college you are interested in attending. Even a point or two can make a big difference.

We have dozens of universities here in Ohio that offer good merit money, including schools like Denison University, Capital University, University of Dayton, Ohio Wesleyan, Miami University, Ohio Northern University, and many more.

The more desirable you are to the school, the more money they will potentially award. Don’t rule out schools based on the sticker price. Cast a wide net, keep your options open, and remember that the sticker price of a college is completely irrelevant. It is all about your “net price” to attend after gift aid is awarded.

Where do you search online for “Free Money”?

When it comes to finding ways to pay for college, Google can be your friend. Searching online for scholarships and ways to pay for college can be time-consuming, but it can be worth your while, and several search websites are very helpful. A few to consider:

• Fastweb.com
• Cappex.com
• College Board’s Big Future
• Scholarships.com
• Scholarship America

Beware of any search engines wanting to charge you money for their services, or that won’t protect your personal information. (This is a case when you may want to actually read those privacy rights…are they selling your information?)

A relatively new trend in scholarships are micro-scholarships. These are sites like raise.me, which award your student small sums of money for various accomplishments during their high school years, like a certain amount for an A and so on. These micro-scholarships can only be used at partner colleges, but if your college is on their list, you could find free money on these types of sites.

Leverage Our College Money Report™

Our free tool allows you to estimate how much colleges think you can afford, whether or not your student qualifies for scholarships or grants, and more. This report is unique to you, and can help you to gain a realistic expectation of both the cost of your student’s dream schools, and how much financial gap you’ll need to make up for in scholarships, grants, or self-funding.

Final tips?

As you start your scholarship journey, we recommend considering the following:

• Apply for scholarships early on. You don’t have to wait until your senior year.
• Be aware of scholarship deadlines. They vary throughout the year. Remember early is better!
• Don’t discount those small-dollar awards. They may have fewer applicants.
• Don’t discount those scholarships that require a little extra effort. Again, they may have fewer applicants because of the extra requirements to win them.
• Apply for as many as you can to improve your chances…minimum of 6 to 8.
• Essays. We could do a whole blog post on essay writing, but we’re money people so we’ll leave you with this: research essay writing before you start applying! Focus on low-effort ways to up your writing game, and look into how to make your essay stand out from the crowd.
• Search and apply for scholarships every year while you’re in college, not just the freshmen year.

Finding ways to pay for college through scholarships can be a valuable piece of your paying-for-college puzzle. Have questions? Capstone is here to help answer them for you. Reach out to us today to learn more about what we do, and how we can help you and your family.

Originally posted 12/2016
Updated 2/2024