Finding Unclaimed Scholarships – Best Advice

Finding unclaimed scholarships and applying to as many as you can is a good strategy because no one wants to have to work several jobs to pay for college. This can be tiring and then bring down your studies. No one wants to have large amounts they owe in student loans either, unless they can help it that is.

The below best advice about finding unclaimed college scholarships will help you pay for some of your college tuition and help ease the college tuition sting. This will let you focus most of your attention on your schooling and not have to worry so much about the cost of it. Understanding where to find these unknown scholarships is the first step.

You have to be willing to do some research online, through databases, and with your school counselors. There are plenty of such funds out there but you may not have heard about them. There are unclaimed scholarships for lesser known sports, for height, for not being involved in anything, for being passionate about the economy or the environment, and so much more. There are also many un-heard about scholarships which pay only $200 – $500 per award that many students don’t take the time to apply thinking it’s just not worth it. This can work to your benefit – if you don’t feel the same way too.

Using very specific search engine keywords you will have a great chance to find these obscure unclaimed scholarships. Make sure you don’t just look at the first couple of results that come up either. Get into the habit of digging at least a couple of pages deep into the returned search results to see what other low paying and undiscovered scholarships can offer you. There are so many elements that play a role in where a listing is in the search engines, and it often comes down to exposure gets the top rankings.

About 98% of students will only look at those first page results. Look at the first 10 pages and then more in finding unidentified scholarships in which to apply to. Even work backwards from the last page to the first if you want to be really aggressive and apply to them. Your competition will be small and this is what you want. Be a big fish in the unclaimed college scholarship small pond and not the tiny speck in the large scholarship ocean.

You always talk to the student financial aid at the various colleges you would like to attend too. Don’t be shy about telling them you need help to pay for your college (all of it!) and that you are looking for unconventional, incognito and unclaimed scholarship funds. They may know about several of them that you would qualify for right on the spot. They can give you that information and save you plenty of leg work involved with finding them on your own. These things tend to change from week to week or month to month. Every college is looking for student financial ways to catch students and make them members of their college.

The requirements for unclaimed college scholarships are going to vary. What is very interesting is that most of them don’t consider the typical run of the mill scholarship criteria such as GPA or sports involvement. Instead they may look at some other elements that are completely outside of the box from the very normal student to the better than average student. This means that if you have a hobby, a special talent, a past award or something creative to offer you may well qualify for them.

If you haven’t been able to get other scholarships due to your GPA or lack of school involvement, then this is a great opportunity for you to be able to find some money for college that isn’t going to be taken by others that are more qualified than you happen to be. You may be wondering why there aren’t many applicants for these unclaimed scholarships.

There are a couple of reasons that this can occur. First, it often has to do with the fact that many people only look for the main streamlined scholarships. They don’t dig deep enough to find these other offers that are out there so the funds go unclaimed. Second, many people don’t think they are going to qualify for a scholarship as they don’t realize that there are plenty of them based on other factors that the mainstream ones mentioned earlier.

Sometimes, it has to do with the fact that such accredited scholarships are for low dollar amounts – which is all to common today. They get passed over and people apply for those with larger dollar amounts that are awarded every year –  but never seem to win one.

Don’t let these smaller amounts sit there unclaimed though. They can add up fast if you are awarded a couple of them. In reality, every little bit you can get in the way of unrecognized scholarships will reduce your financial commitment to pay for your college education.

Get started looking for these unclaimed scholarships for college as soon as you can. You don’t want to find one that is perfect for you and then see that the deadline for applying has already passed. The amount of money that doesn’t get used in scholarship funds annually is really disappointing. Use that to your advantage and make sure you can get what you need to pay for your education.