<p>I guess this is kinda the wrong place to put this, but I figure you guys know me best, so I’m still going to post this here.</p>
<p>My question is: Since I’m graduating HS this year, what scholarships (not connected to auditions or college academic admissions) are available to grads? I see that most of them require that you must be a graduating senior, but I haven’t really been able to find many that don’t say that. Any help?</p>
<p>look on [FastWeb:</a> Scholarships, Financial Aid and Colleges](<a href=“http://www.fastweb.com%5DFastWeb:”>http://www.fastweb.com) you can find lots of independent scholarships there… you plug in your stats, and they send you information on scholarships for which you may qualify.</p>
<p>Most people are aware that there are many sham “scholarships” on the web. Is there a site that lists places/scholarships to avoid due to shady origins. Obviously a starting point would be to work with a site recommended by a reputable individual , such as FastWeb that KatMT gave above, but it is good to have a place to check if you explore on your own.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Other places to check are with your high school’s alumni association, your parent’s workplace, your new college’s alumni association. Also things like the Elks Club, Rotary Club and the like.</p>
<p>A lot of the big scholarships at Fastweb are highly publicized because they are on that site and have many thousands of students competing for them. If you can find a few more local scholarships I think your chances greatly improve, at least that has been the case for my son.</p>
<p>It’s pretty late in the game if you graduated in 2008. Checking with the school’s guidance office and as mentioned searching locally. Most of these are small 500.00 here, 1000.00 there, and you have to write an essay or perform some other time consuming tasks competing against many others. This is why the guidance office generally recommends you start looking into this stuff in January. Your best bet for money is to contact the Financial Aid office at the college and straight up ask for grant money. If your parents filled out a FAFSA there is a calculated value of what they expect you to pay called the “EFC” Expected Family Contribution. For example, if tuition, room and board are 40K and your EFC is 22K then you qualify for up 18K in grants and student loans. Grants are free money the loans you have to pay back. Grant money is generally available at private schools. If you have been accepted to multiple schools you can definitely squeeze them by stating that so and so offered me this why haven’t you? Bottomline, call the school and ask, worse thing they can do is say no.</p>