hey everyone Tina here are the FAFSA guru and for those of you who don't know me I assist
families with the college planning and financial aid process and my specialty is really in the area
of financial aid and helping families complete the FAFSA the CSS profile form in addition to
searching for scholarships while I help with a whole bunch of other pieces of the college
planning process that is where my expertise is and and mostly what I do with families so today
I'm going to give you five tips to help you with the scholarship search process October has come
and gone many of you have done your FAFSA which is awesome but once you get that completed there's
still a lot more you can do scholarships are a whole separate resource of free money that you
can get your high school senior student can get to help you pay for college you just have to take the
time and effort to apply for them and it's not as easy as filling out one form like the FAFSA
or the CSS profile form you actually have to fill out a separate application for every scholarship
you apply for so it can get a little bit tedious and it's even more tedious searching for these
scholarships if any of you've been doing it then you know exactly what I mean so I'm gonna give
you five tips to kind of help you get started with this whole fun process of searching keep
in mind we are in prime scholarship search season right now a lot of the deadlines you know they've
started to go by beginning in August and every month there's more deadlines for scholarships
and they're going to continue all the way through til about April so this is the time you want to
be searching and applying for these I recommend that students spend on average about one hour
every single week searching for and applying for scholarships it really is worth it there's a lot
of scholarship money that goes unused every single year so I highly encourage you to get
started okay first and foremost create a separate email I cannot stress this enough it you are going
to get bombarded with messages and spam once you start putting your email out there for all
of these scholarships and your personal email will overflow and you'll get super-frustrated
so start a separate gmail account specifically for scholarship excuse me scholarship searching
that you can go in and check every day or once a week or you know whatever you decide your schedule
is going to be in terms of your scholarship work so number one is get a separate email number two
is create a Google Excel spreadsheet or an Excel spreadsheet something to help you electronically
manage all of these scholarships because part of what you're going to be doing is searching
for scholarships and it's going to take some time you could spend a good hour just sifting
through the descriptions of scholarships to see if you're eligible to apply for them so start a
Google spreadsheet with several different columns so as you're searching and you come across these
scholarships you're gonna include one column that would have the link of where you're going
to apply for the scholarship or the name of the scholarship how to access it you're also going to
have the amount of the scholarship in a column the due date and another column and then a last column
that says applied so you can check that off when you apply and then list them in the order that
they're due so you know if you're going to spend this week an hour searching for scholarships you
can use that whole hour as you're searching and you can actually put those scholarships into your
Google spreadsheet so that you're organized and you know which ones are coming to you which ones
you need to focus on first and then next week when you sit down to spend your other or your next hour
then you can sit down and start applying for the ones that you listed in this sheet so that's tip
number two start an Excel spreadsheet or some kind of electronic file that's going to help you stay
organized step number three as you're searching if you come you're likely going to come across
a lot of scholarships where the deadlines have actually passed and it's too late to apply but it
might look like one of the perfect scholarships for you to apply for make sure you add that to
your Google spreadsheet because it's likely that you can apply for it for next year too and that
it the new one just has not been released yet so put that in your spreadsheet with a note to
follow up on or check in on because when you're searching for these once you see it and you click
out of it it could be gone forever it took you a while to get there so you might as well list it as
another resource for next year to possibly apply for it then when the new one comes out so that's
tip number three tip number four a scholarship website scholarships dot-com that's one of the
better websites that I recommend and if you go there it's WW scholarships com and up at the
top there is something that says directory search or search directory I can't remember
but if you click on that there's actually a whole list of scholarships that are available
by certain categories such as age gender grade point average disability that you might have a
sniff City all sorts of different categories you it goes by the you know that you're a senior in
high school or what your major is this is a really great resource to use when you're
searching for scholarships you can come across a ton on this website using just this resource but
again when you click on the category you're gonna get a whole list of scholarships that you have to
go through and you have to make sure you're eligible to apply for it you got to read the
little description and make sure that you meet all of the eligibility requirements before you
apply so that's super important it takes a little bit of time I know it can be frustrating but it's
absolutely so worth it and then tip number five I have is for you to get help if you are just
starting this process and you have no idea where to start then get help from a professional this
is something that I do I help families with all the time I have a couple of different services
that I provide one is a 45 minute personalized scholarship session where I will help you learn
the ins and outs of the scholarship process how to navigate it where to look and kind of help you
just focus your efforts so that when you spend this time searching you're actually not going
to be wasting time spinning your wheels and then the other service I provide is actually searching
for scholarships for families I have a scholarship questionnaire that I have the student fill out or
the parrot fill out on behalf of the student then I use that questionnaire to go out and search for
specific scholarships for that student based on the information on the questionnaire I do
this in our time in our blocks and I guarantee a minimum of five solid scholarship resources for
you with for each hour of effort that I put into it so that's tip number five if you're feeling
overwhelmed you're not sure where it's a start you just want a little help or you want somebody
to to find them for you then seek the help of a professional hopefully me because I'm good
at what I do and I will make your life easier so I hope this helps five tips to help you with
your scholarship search process don't stop your financial aid process now just because your FAFSA
is done there are so many scholarships out there that you could be applying for if you'd like to
get in touch with me you can find my information down in the description box but my website is WWE
and feel free to give me a call or text me at two zero seven five five
three zero three zero two if you want to set up an appointment with me I'd
be happy to help you take care and I'll talk to the guys soon