subject: Winning Scholarships and Grants: What types are there? [print this page] Winning Scholarships and Grants: What types are there?
Hello my name is Lacey and I am a full time college student. Over the past year or so, I have gone from working two jobs, going to school full time, having no life and barley scraping by. To now only working about 10 hours a week and having all of my school expenses and most of my living expenses paid thanks to scholarships and grants. No I am not a straight A student and no I am not the next "basketball phoneme", instead I'm just another average student but I have found how to use scholarships and grants to make my college experience a little less stressful and not nearly as expensive. But enough with me, and I would like to answer a question that I am regularly asked by other people about winning scholarships and grants.
What types of scholarships and grants are available?
There are two main types that you need to be aware of. First is the merit based scholarship or grant. This type of scholarship that promotes a specific talent you may posses or skill you may have. So say you are an amazing guitar player, you don't even have to be amazing but you have a ton of passion for it, you would want to go after a merit based scholarship or grant. There are many great organizations out there that were started by some guy or girl who loved to play the guitar, or swim, or is crazy about math and started an organization to find people with talent and passion for a certain subject and make those people's lives easier by giving them funding to accomplish their dreams. So if you have great passion for a subject then you have a good shot at getting a merit based scholarship or grant.
The second type of scholarship or grant out there is a need based scholarship, and these types are solely based off the amount of income that comes in to your household. One sticky situation with these is that if you are under the age of 24, you are still considered a dependent so they factor in your parents income and base your financial situation off their income as well as yours. Depending on your parent's income might be a big hurdle for you and trying to win one of these types of scholarships or grants. Even if you think that your parents make too much money, still take a look at what is out there. Each organization has their own parameters as to what they consider a student in need, so don't just write these off because there are a lot of possibilities here to get some free cash for college.
So I hope this helps you on your way to winning some scholarships and grants!
