Universities Weblog

Financial aid is a complicated thing. The federal government has a philosophy on it. Your state has an approach. And your college has its own ideas about how to manage the state and federal funds.

In many ways your school will position itself as a middleman to help determine what state and federal aid you get. Your college's financial aid office will even handle the money for you – take it from Uncle Sam, pay themselves, and give what's left to you.

There are two main tricks to getting the most possible help out of the available financial aid. The first is to identify scholarships and grants unique to your school and to apply for them. Maybe your financial aid office will mention them to you; maybe they won't. The second trick is to find scholarships and grants that aren't connected with your school in any way, but that are run by foundations or organizations that like you – no matter where you go to school.

Somewhere there's a foundation that gives scholarships to people like you – to the bow-legged children of former rodeo stars, or to the grand-daughters of people persecuted by McCarthy, or to blue-eyed redheads (regardless of gender) who can document their ancestral ties to County Down in Ireland.

So the question is, how do you find those scholarships?

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