Getting Free Money for College Shouldn't Be Hard

There is a lot of money available to prospective college students. There aren’t really any tricks or shortcuts to getting it, all it takes is a little motivation and perseverance.

The following five guidelines will help you know exactly what you need to do in order to get into the dough and help you pay for all those expensive college years.

1. Don’t Get Pessimistic: The biggest mistake many students make is believing they can’t afford college. Students should never assume that there isn’t enough money out there or that they will not qualify for college scholarships or grants. College admission counselors know that practically anyone can find money for college and university studies if they are willing to search for the right combination of their abilities, what the school offers, and their financial needs.

2. Start Early: Students should start looking for college scholarships by the time they reach their sophomore year in high school. At the start of the Junior year or even before, Both the student and his/her parents need to be finding out what kind of financial aid programs that the college of the student’s choice has to offer. And they should begin writing these schools for college admission, scholarship, and financial aid information. Students should remember that getting a scholarship can be even more simple when they don’t look to far for one.

Often times, the best scholarships are within your own city limit and not on a national level. There is always less competition making the chances of finding a scholarship much easier. One of the best places to find local scholarship sponsors are hospitals.

3. Include Your Parents: It isn’t anything new that parents should to have their money all figured out long before their child heads off to college.

Parents need to be there in every way for their children. They have a special obligation to make sure their children will be able to pay for college. Many high school students have no idea what they are doing in the whole college admissions process.

Sadly enough, many high school students don’t even realize that they can get free money for college. They are told time after time in high school the potential to get free money, but for some reason they have become accustomed to block out anything a high school counselor has to say and don’t ever realize how much opportunity for free money they are missing.

Therefore, a parent needs to actively teach a child throughout their high school career that education is so important that organizations, companies, and even individual people are willing to pay for it.

4. Lead the Rest: Everyone has heard that the early bird gets the worm, well the race for college scholarships is no different. First, if they are eligible, students better there chances of receiving federal aid by filling the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which is a funding requirement for many institutions. Second, taking the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) during the junior year of high school will qualify students for a bulk of the national college scholarships that require a PSAT score.

5. Be Involved in the Community: Luckily, the focus is shifting from grades to personality a little ever year for college scholarship committees. Before, they would only look at grades, but now are looking more towards the overall attributes of the student.

Students who have spent all of their high school career doing nothing but studying and concentrating on getting straight A’s may not be as likely to get a scholarship then those who have actively participated in community service groups, extra curricular activities and other things such as these.

Most college admissions officers weigh extracurricular activities combined with grades much more than grades alone. Grades only tell them if the student has put some effort into their high school work. If you were a college admissions or college scholarship committee, you wouldn’t select students who have no community involvement and proved that they have spent all of their time studying over students who were able to distribute their time well enough that they could participate in many extra curricular activities and still find enough time to work on their school work.

Therefore, there is still hope for those who didn’t spend all of their time studying in high school. As long as you spent your time actively involved in the community or in extra curricular activities, you should have no problem finding a nice scholarship.

A top college scholarship is just a click away. Go to Zinch.com and create your own Z-Folio to showcase yourself to college admissions officers around the nation.

College admission officers are giving students the power to showcase themselves and you can be a part of it.