Courtesy of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), a source of comprehensive information about many of these scholarships is available on the World Wide Web.
FinAid (http://www.finaid.org), the Financial Aid Information Page provides information about scholarships, fellowships, grants and contests. Included are general scholarship and fellowship databases and databases of awards that are population-specific and academic field-specific. In addition to providing extensive information about commercial scholarship search services, including caveats and a section about scams, the FinAid Page provides links to four quality scholarship databases that students may search free of charge. Many scholarship applications are due early in the year from January to April for consideration for the fall semester. So start planning now for your future.
FastWEB (Financial Aid Search Through the WEB) (http://www.fastweb.com), a product of Student Services Inc., is the Internet's largest free scholarship search service. More than 400,000 private sector scholarships, fellowships, grants and loans are in the database. New scholarships are added to the database daily and there is a wealth of financial aid information for students and parents.
Collegeboard Scholarship Search (http://www.collegeboard.com) is a free Web version of the College Board's FUND FINDER scholarship database. Listings of scholarships, fellowships, loans, internships and other types of financial aid programs from 3,300 national, state, public and private sources are contained in the College Board's database. The database is updated annually.
CollegeNET MACH25 (http://www.mach25.com) is a database of more than 500,000 private sector awards, including school-specific awards, from 1,570 sponsors. Provided by CollegeNET, MACH25 Breaking the Tuition Barrier is a free Web version of the Wintergreen/Orchard House Scholarship Finder database. To match a student's profile against the award listings, MACH25 uses residential, personal, academic, organizational affiliation and general criteria.
Scholarship Hunter (http://scholarshiphunter.com) -The FREE & EASY Scholarship Source
Another source of private scholarships is the reference section of local municipal libraries. Numerous publications on scholarships, fellowships, grants and loans are available.
