This has been a long time coming, but I wanted to post some of my comments and tips from applying to various scholarships and colleges in my junior and senior years of high school. As fruits of my efforts, I was able to get over $8,000 in unrestricted personal scholarships and partially pay for my schooling at Carnegie Mellon University.
I did a presentation at the end of high school that encompassed a lot of the topics that I learned about in my research, including how to find and pursue your passion, develop an action plan to build upon your interests and not forget any deadlines, get the most out of a college or scholarship application, understand the ins and outs of financial aid, and finally how to keep everything organized! View the e-book here at 5 Key Steps To College and Scholarship Applications. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments or feel free to email me at nolan [at] nolanhergert.com.
Good Uncommon Scholarships to Research:
Elks Clubs (often have local branches that do mini competitions and qualify you for regional and state competitions!)
SEMI Pacific Northwest Scholarship (technology)
Oregon Student Assistance Commission (or another state-sponsored scholarship organization)
AHBAI Beauty Luster Scholarship
Comcast Leaders and Achievers Scholarship
Google Search “‘College Name’ + ‘Major’ + Scholarship” and see what you find. Some departmental scholarship programs are not as publicized by the school as others. Sometimes there are separate applications too
ScholarGator–a pet project of mine that scrapes local high school scholarship databases and aggregates them onto one website using Scrubyt and PHP/MySQL. Want to help or add new information? Email me!
Key Blogs That I Recommend:
Chris Penn (The Financial Aid Podcast): Excellent resource for up-to-date scholarship and financial aid information. I also highly recommend his e-books as well.
Cal Newport (Study Hacks Blog): Great tips for managing your first few years in college. Posts new articles a few times a week.
Zinch.com: Interesting social integration of students searching for colleges and colleges searching for students. Allows hosting of images, movies, etc., features ad-free scholarship searches, and allows you to “shout out” to a school.
Hey Nolan, what you use for your website?
I got my domain quite a bit ago and I’m hoping to host it once I get my desktop over here in Daytona Beach
FYI. after missing school here at Embry Riddle due to financial problems I took some last minute classes at PSU. But now I’m here
we should meet up since we aren’t as far as we were before. Hahaha, at least now we are on the same coast.
Hey Luis! Great to hear from you
Hmm…for hosting I use bluehost.com, but I’m planning on self-hosting it when I get my router back. The backend for the blog is WordPress, which has held together pretty well.
Ahh, ok. How about visiting Hilhi? I stopped over there a few times over break actually
BTW, the hard drive DJ is still a little buggy, but I have a few other projects that I’m working on too when I have time.
How are you doing? Find any friends in Aerospace Engineering?