Unclaimed Scholarships and Money for College

Unclaimed scholarships are funds for school, often millions of dollars annually, that aren’t claimed. There aren’t enough applicants for the funds that are offered and that means they never get put to good use for someone’s college education. There are people out there that have heard about these unclaimed funds, but they don’t believe they are for real. This is due to various scammers that try to charge for information on such funds.

You should never have to pay for unclaimed scholarships – and those funds can be for real out there. You just have to spend some time and effort looking for them. What you will find are some quite obscure scholarships out there that people don’t know about. The unclaimed funds aren’t from the common and popular scholarships that volumes of students apply for annually.

The fact that these are hidden or unusual scholarships means that few people find out about them. Should you apply for them, you will have a significantly higher chance of being approved for some of that money. This is because there is a smaller group of people who the selection committee will be looking at in terms of dispersing the funds to. The characteristics that a person needs to have for these lesser known scholarships are quite unique.

Don’t assume that because your GPA isn’t extremely high and you don’t play sports that there isn’t any money for you to go to college. That is a mindset that too many people have and that is why so much money goes unclaimed. You will have to be proactive in your search for these funds. They aren’t going to be as easy to find, but with very selective keywords you can narrow down the search results that come back to you.

The assumption that unclaimed scholarships are hard to get is what prevents most people from even looking for them. They feel that unclaimed means the funds are too tough to get or that they aren’t going to offer a large enough amount. What it really means though is that not enough people knew about the scholarship and applied for it. The amount should never hold you back either.

Applying for many scholarships that are worth $500 is well worth that time and effort. If you get several of them, that money adds up very quickly. Even one of them means $500 less that you have to come up with on your own to pay for college. Don’t focus on only the high dollar scholarships. The higher the award amount, the more applicants you will have to compete with for them.

Don’t overlook the funds that may be offered by specific employers. They often have stipulations that you must be an employee of that business to apply. However, most of them also allow you to apply if you have a parent or grandparent that works for that business or that has retired from that business. Once again, the pool of applicants for such potentially unclaimed scholarship money is going to be dramatically reduced compared to the typical scholarship out there.

With that in mind, it is worth it to see if where you or your family works offers such funds. You can explore their website to gain that information. You can also make a phone call to human resources to get additional information. It is believed about 85% of unclaimed scholarships are directly linked to businesses so this is a gold mine out there that you don’t want to by-pass.

Now that you have a good understanding of unclaimed scholarships, you can start looking for them. They will have certain criteria and deadlines so make sure you pay close attention to those factors. You want to do everything within your power to ensure you have funds you can use for college. The effort you put into finding unclaimed scholarship monies  that aren’t as well-known is going to pay off. By increasing your chance of being a recipient, you can slash the amount of money you have to borrow and repay to attend college.