Five College Scholarships You've Probably Never Heard Of
Where do I start?
You should also know that there's still some scholarship money out there if your financial package wasn't as big as you thought it would be. You still have time to apply for funds to make college more affordable this fall.
To get you started, here are five college scholarships that we're betting you've never even heard of:
A $1,000 scholarship offered by Cappex (an online college search engine) requires that the recipient be a high school student or GED recipient planning to attend college or a current college student. This scholarship isn’t based on grades, and instead rewards a strong record of extracurricular, leadership and/or volunteer activities.
Award: $1,000
Deadline: March 31, 2013
2. Viral Video Contest
The DLG Viral Video Scholarship Contest™ was created as a community service project to help educate the public on safe driving practices by awarding a scholarship to the film student or video production enthusiast who creates the best public service announcement video. Three scholarships will be awarded to the participant that creates the best viral video about “Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Award: $500, $1,000 and $2,000
Deadline: March 31, 2013
3. American Fire Sprinkler Association Scholarship Program
If you're not feeling up to producing a creative video on short notice, this might be the scholarship for you. Open to high school seniors, this scholarship only requires you to read a short overview of how fire sprinklers save lives, then take a ten-question, open book, multiple-choice test. For each question answered correctly, you'll receive one entry into a drawing for one of ten $2,000 scholarships. Pretty easy, right?
Award: $2,000
Deadline: April 3, 2013
4. College JumpStart Scholarship
The College JumpStart Scholarship is an annual competition -- financial need is not considered -- that is open to 10th-12th graders, college students and non-traditional students. The main requirement is that you are committed to going to school and can express your goals for getting a higher education. This scholarship asks for your GPA if you know it, but it's specifically set up to provide adult learners with help attending college. So if you don't know your GPA, more weight is assigned to a personal statement about how education will help you achieve your goals.
Award: $250, $750 and $1,500
Deadline: April 15, 2013
5. The Internet Initiative Scholarship
If you're pretty active on the Internet, and you have your own blog, you might take a crack at this one. You only need to write a 500 to 1000-word blog post answering the question: What do you plan to do after college and how would you use the Internet to help you excel in your occupation?
Award: $2,500
Deadline: April 30, 2013
Begin Your Own Scholarship Search
With so many scholarships out there, it’s hard to know where to start. Talk to your school’s Financial Aid office and utilize other great resources like online scholarship search engines. Here are some Web sites that can help you start your online search:
And don’t forget to check out the list of scholarships available through Piedmont Technical College.
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