Let’s face it… college is an expensive as heck 4 years (or more for some of us). I mean, we have to pay tuition, food, housing, transportation, books (ridiculous!). By the time you’re done it can be $50,000 or more.

I think I’m a lot like you.

I graduated college a little over a year ago, NOT a straight A student, do some extra carricular activities… but not a ton,… and my parents don’t make a million bucks a year.

And guess what…

I was able to get $45,421 in free college scholarships which completely paid for every single dime of my college expenses. Nope, I’m not some smart dude that won a ton of academic scholarships (I did get a few though)… most of my scholarships came from other places and a little bit of hard work finding and applying for scholarships.

Anyhow, I want to “pay it forward” and tell you how I went about getting over $45,000 in scholarships… and how you can get free college scholarships too.

How (and where) I Found, Free College Scholarships To Apply For

Online:

One of the first places I went to find scholarships was the internet. There are a ton of free scholarships online… and after way too many hours of pounding away at the keyboard… I found some great places online to find scholarships.

You’ll even see one of the sites that I actually got a pretty darn big scholarship from… all for free.

Here are the places that I found the best list of free college scholarships… and these are the ones that aren’t all scammy (there are some scams out there… but the ones that are legit are written below).

Fastweb.com –

*(my favorite scholarship search site)

Fastweb is my favorite place to search for scholarships. It takes about 10 minutes to set up a free account (here’s a video of me showing how to set up an account at fastweb).I actually ended up getting a multi-thousand dollar scholarship from Fastweb… pretty cool stuff.

Why I like Fastweb

Fastweb is a cool site because it’s completely free and it has the largest database of scholarships that I was able to find. In the video I made of me creating a free account and doing a search… it came up with something like 35 scholarships that fit my criteria.

Also, Fastweb actually emails you every time a new scholarship comes up that fits your criteria (based on some questions they ask while setting up your free account). This is cool because you don’t have to log in all of the time to see if there are new scholarships for you… they tell you automatically.

Another reason is that in Fastweb they make it easy to see the deadlines for the scholarships and show you how to apply. When a scholarship deadline is a week or two away, they shoot you an email reminding you.

How I rate Fastweb Overall

Overall, I really love Fastweb. Like I said, I ended up getting a several thousand dollar scholarship from it… and it only takes like 10 minutes to set up a free account. Well worth it if you ask me.

If I had to rate Fastweb on a scale…

Ease of Use:
Number of Scholarships:
Best Chance of Finding Scholarships For You:
Overall:

So, overall… for me, Fastweb is something that EVERYONE looking for college scholarships should sign up for (once again it’s free!).

Check out Fastweb and watch the video of me setting up a free account over there.

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Free College Scholarships.net -

This website is a lot like Fastweb, but has some different scholarships. Overall, I liked Fastweb better, but this one is definitely worth using because I found that it had scholarships Fastweb didn’t have… and Fastweb had scholarships that Free College Scholarships didn’t have.Head over to Free College Scholarships <<

Why I Like This Site…

Like I said, this site isn’t as good (in my opinion) as Fastweb… but it is a great source to find some scholarships that Fastweb doesn’t have. They have a $10,000 scholarship giveaway themselves every few months… so that’s a bonus just for setting up a free scholarship search account.

As with Fastweb, this site has millions of dollars of free scholarships in their database… and make it pretty darn easy to search for ones that match your criteria. Just like Fastweb, they have to make their money somehow… so there are some ads during the process… but you can easily click “no” if you’re not interested. To me, this is a pain… but well worth it in the end because they come up with some great scholarships that I wasn’t able to find anywhere else.

How I Rate FreeCollegeScholarships.net Overall…

Overall this site is cool… but I would put more time into Fastweb if I were you. I actually signed up for free college scholarship search accounts on both sites (and a few others that ended up being scammy and crappy) and found it way easier to find scholarships on these sites than by doing my own searches on Google.

Ease of Use:
Number of Scholarships:
Best Chance of Finding Scholarships For You:
Overall:

There are other scholarship search sites out there… but they really aren’t worth linking to because they seemed to me to be a bit too scammy that I don’t feel comfortable sending you there (do searches for free scholarships… you’ll find the one’s I’m talking about).

So, head over to:

• Fastweb – Sign up for a free scholarship search account at Fastweb
• Free College Scholarships - Get a free account over there

Finding Scholarships Other Ways…

There are a ton of other ways that I went out and found college scholarships (online was the easiest)… and actually the most effective ways I found are:

• School Senior Counselor – Probably about 1/3 of my scholarships came from my high school senior counselors office. Just go in there and ask them for applications to scholarships… they usually have a ton of them that you can look through to see if they fit you.
• The Colleges You Apply For – About 1/2 of the scholarships I got ended up coming from the colleges I applied for. Every college has academic related scholarships that are mainly based off of your GPA and SAT scores… but, what most people forget is that most colleges have scholarship foundations. The whole purpose of these foundations is to give out scholarship money to incoming students. Find the scholarship foundations at the colleges you are applying to (through the financial aid office) and ask them for a list of scholarships.

There are a billion places to find people and organizations that want to give away money in the form of scholarships.

Here Are Some Other Articles That You Should Read To Improve Your Chances Of Getting Scholarships

• Resources for Free Scholarships
• Weird Scholarships – Scholarships most people don’t know about… but that a ton of people qualify for.
• How I Didn’t Pay A Dime for College – Gives you some tips on what to do to increase your chances of getting scholarships. Great read.

The other day a reader named Anne C. from Georgia asked me the simple question of:

“How do I get scholarships?”

Well Anne… this answer isn’t exactly simple… but it isn’t very complicated either.  I’ll give you a brief outline of what colleges look for, and point you toward other resources to help you get college scholarships.

First off,

Read my article that I wrote called, “Free Scholarships - How I didn’t Pay a Dime for College”. 

That article is a work in progress and I continually add new information and resources onto that page. 

Second,

Realize that getting scholarships is a NUMBERS GAME as much as it skill

Yep, it’s a numbers game.  Just like if you are a salesman, the more potential customers you visit… the more sales you’ll generate (unless you’re the worst salesman in the world).

So, don’t be too picky when deciding on which scholarships to apply for.  Apply for as many as you humanly can while still keeping each application a high quality. 

I’m not saying to just mass produce your scholarship applications… the scholarship committee will probably see right through it…

… what I am saying is to apply for as many good scholarships as you can to increase your odds of winning some of them.

If you only apply for 2 or 3… odds are that you will only win one (OR NONE).

Third,

Start as early as you can strengthening your resume

By your resume I mean everything that the college scholarship committee’s look at, including:

• Your grades – Work hard to get your GPA at least over 3.5 for the best chances of getting scholarships
• The SAT and ACT tests – Take the SAT seriously.  Many scholarship applications require a minimum SAT score to qualify.  Usually it’s something like a 1000 -1200… sometimes higher… sometimes lower.
• Extracurricular activities- Go out an volunteer for a few things.  Join a club or two related to your career goals.  Do something to show the scholarship committee’s that you are a well rounded student… and person.
• Reference letters – Start in your junior year or early in your senior year getting a feel for who you can get great reference letters from.  I happen to know very well the registrar at a college I applied to… so I had her write me a great reference letter.  Ask a teacher who knows you well that can give a great reference for your ability as a student and a person.

Get those elements above rolling as soon as you can and you’ll be way ahead of the students who put it off until later in their senior year in high school.

Fourth,

Look at local, national, and college specific scholarships

Don’t count yourself out on any scholarships.  I applied for probably 5 – 8 national scholarships (I got one that paid me $4,000), about 10-15 local scholarships, and probably another 10-15 college specific scholarship. 

So, apply for all of those little $500 local scholarships (they really add up), those big $5, 10, 20,000 national scholarships, and all of the college specific ones you can find.

I actually used a website called Fastweb to look for the national scholarships… it is free… really easy, and has a ton of scholarships right here online.  Check it out and set up a free account to get going on that.

All in all, successfully getting college scholarships is both a process and making sure you work hard your junior and senior years in high school to meet the scholarship GPA and SAT requirements.

That is a quick and dirty overview of what it takes to get scholarships.  I’ll go in more depth and give you step-by-step instructions on how to get that scholarship you want.  Until then, browse the rest of the site, set up an account at Fastweb to start searching for scholarships, and get your butt in gear making sure your grades, SAT, and reference letters are in-line.