Giraffe, many scholarship programs send the money directly to the college. So you won’t exactly have “extra” money on hand…I was on the board of a scholarship organization and we had to stop sending the award winners the checks directly. The money was paying for all sorts of things-- but not what it was intended for- to help needy kids pay tuition for college. So now the check goes into the kids account automatically and the college alerts us if the student withdraws or never shows up for the semester…in which case, we get our money back to be used for someone else.