Free Money For College: The Top 5 Ways
McDonald's All-American? Winner of the Intel Science Prize? Congrats -- Every college in America would love to pay your tuition. You can stop reading now.
For the rest of us, there's no easy way around it. College is going to be expensive. And while Zinch's scholarships are probably the sweetest (and most prestigious, obviously) out there, there's only so much love to go around. The good news is that free money is free money, and there's much more if you're willing to work a bit for it.
Here are the top five ways to get yours:
1) Scholarships -- Straight up free money. The reality is that by now, each of you should have an account on the large scholarship sites, it should be updated, and you should search at least once a month for new scholarships. You'd be amazed what you can find, and studies show that putting your time into scholarship searches (if you actually take it seriously and put a little thought in) will pay you four to five times more per hour than most other jobs a high school student can get. Here are three big, well known scholarship aggregators. If you haven't already, create an account and begin searching on each.
2) Upromise -- Letting other people save money for you: Upromise is a site started a few years ago which allows you to save money for college by making every day purchases. It sounds a little crazy, and it's not going to pay your whole tuition bill, but if you start a couple years before college starts, you could save $1000-$2000 dollars on tuition with very little effort. How it works: Upromise has a relationship with lots of big companies, including McDonalds, Ebay, Barnes and Noble, Dell, GNC, and so on. When you buy something from one of these places with a credit card linked to Upromise, the company pays Upromise, who then turns around and pays you. In the end, it's only 1-2% of the price of an item, but over a couple years, it can add up, and there's no cost to you beyond signing up.
3) Do community service (and get paid for it):
Teach For America (TFA) is a non-profit organization which is part of AmericCorps. Their mission is to close the academic achievement gap between children from different socio-economic backgrounds. It sends recent college graduates (generally from very good schools) into urban public schools to teach for two years. In addition to benefits such as loan forbearance (SAT word, look it up!) and interest payment on qualified student loans, Teach for America teachers receive an educational award (grant) of $4,725 at the end of each year of service.
Friends of Vista (Also Part of AmeriCorps) wants to end hunger and homelessness. The program offers to pay $4,725 of your college education in exchange for a small stipend and your agreeing to work towards their goals. Since 1965, over 120,000 Americans have performed national service as VISTA Volunteers. VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) places individuals with community-based agencies to help find long-term solutions to the problems caused by urban and rural poverty.
4) Get Better Grades: Have you ever sat in class wondering why no one was paying you for all of your hard work? Well, it turns out someone actually is -- your future college. College admissions is not only getting more competitive for students, it's also becoming increasingly competitive for colleges. As a result, colleges are more and more willing to give out merit scholarships to attract the most talented students (like you).
Bringing your grades up a bit will not only increase your chances of getting into the schools you want, but it will also DECREASE the cost of those schools, because they will be more likely to offer you better aid packages to try to convince you to come.
5) Improve Your test scores (stupid, yes, but true): This goes with #4. Studies have shown time and again that standardized test scores do not correlate with college performance. Does this stop colleges from using them for admissions and merit based aid decisions? Of course not (though we're fighting for it).
The sad reality of our time is that test scores are important, but not nearly important enough to define yourself by, as so many often do. You are, after all, much more than a test score. And while we would never advocate worrying about your test scores, studies show that improving yours by 100 points will increase your average aid package by $1000 at a public school and $1800 at a private school.
The moral of the story: if you can easily raise your score by a couple hundred points, it will help as much as winning a couple scholarships. For an easy way of doing it, check out the new service being offered by ePrep.com -- It's a less expensive option that is getting great reviews, and done entirely through streaming online videos.
Update: We pulled a couple strings and the good people at ePrep.com have agreed to extend a $100 discount to the Zinch Nation -- just enter the code "Zinch" when checking out.
Have any other smart ways to get free money for college? Share it! The best idea that someone leaves in the comments over the next 48 hours gets a free Zinch t-shirt (very sweet) and Sarah's autograph (even sweeter). Seriously.
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Posted on January 25, 2008 under Advice |
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Comments (18)
Thanks for the list!
It's not free money, but I told the colleges that i want to go to how much financial aid the other colleges I applied to offered, and one of them increased their offer by $2000.
Posted on January 29, 2008 10:19 AM
Thank you for the list. I need help paying for college and I think I need to find a job. I'm from NYC. Anyone can help a brotha out?
Posted on January 29, 2008 1:11 PM
In addition to utilizing those websites that are scholarship databases of pure gold, make sure you talk to your counselors. I've gotten a lot of scholarship information from my school's counseling office, which a lot of my friends haven't been able to tap until now. There are a lot of local scholarships that the principal and the counselors get and sometimes they're not even on FastWeb or anything of that sort! Thus, make sure you provide some information to your counselors if [s]he already doesn't have it such as a copy of your Common Application or any other application, as they'll be better able to use it to help you find scholarships. Also, ask your parents to ask around if they work at a large corporation. A lot of the times, those corporations will have scholarships for their employees' children. It doesn't hurt to ask around so ask your parents to check but be warned, there may be a lot of guidelines and stringent rules that you must follow.
Posted on January 29, 2008 8:17 PM
You've pretty much covered all the ways one could ever get free money. But, I was thinking that another way to get free money is by getting a paid internship. With an internship, you get to be surrounded by whatever you enjoy most, whether it is doing scientific research in a lab or working at your city's mayor's office, while still getting paid.
also, another way to get free money is by becoming a U.S. Senate Page. Usually, pages are in their junior year of high school when they are nominated and if accepted they are appointed one of four terms. If you're a Senate Page you get to live in Washington D.C. and go to school there for free while getting money to work in the Senate at the same time. From what I've heard, you go to school in the morning for about three to four hours and then you go to the Senate and work there for the rest of day. US Senate pages earn about $20,000 per year which could easily help finance college.
Posted on January 29, 2008 9:08 PM
Jeremy is a free money genius! So glad he's on the Zinch Team. I'm still trying to get him to figure out how to get us all free Jr. bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy's for our lunch meetings:)
Posted on January 31, 2008 5:02 PM
hey you can even try this website site called Myfreedegree.com its how i found zinch
Posted on February 1, 2008 12:13 PM
I really appreciate the list that was supplied above. It has really helped me become more aware of the free money or scholarships being offered and how I can recieve and find those websites. Thank you again.
Posted on February 1, 2008 4:31 PM
Don't forget two things:
1) The Search Engines. Have a major in mind? A talent? Put it to work and keyword it. (ex: "Photography Scholarship" in Google will definitely pull up some results to consider!)
2) http://www.collegenet.com/mach25/app. This neat little database I recently discovered says they have over $1.6 in scholarships and even has most university's own scholarships databased. Pretty neat, you can either fill out a profile or do a keyword search.
Thanks for the tips.
Posted on February 1, 2008 5:10 PM
Still working on those Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. If anyone has the inside scoop, sharing would be appreciated.
Posted on February 1, 2008 7:20 PM
Some other things to consider as well:
1) Think locally. Check with your guidance counselor for any internships, scholarships, etc that he/she may be aware of.
2) Check with local organizations such as your chamber of commerce, local govt, etc to see if they offer any scholarship opportunities.
3) Does any of your family work for a big corporation? Research it; the company may offer scholarships or opportunities for employee's children.
4) Don't give up. Be determined. There is plenty of opportunity. Keep looking --- research!
Good luck. :)
Posted on February 2, 2008 1:30 PM
Zinchers, fantastic ideas -- really well done.
And now the hard part, choosing a winner from the finalists.
Our three finalists are:
Rick
Nancy
Matthew
The winner will receive a free Zinch t-shirt and Sarah's autograph, so alot is riding on this.
Re-read their suggestions and let us know who's suggestion you think was the most helpful and/or unique.
Posted on February 2, 2008 6:50 PM
Really cool ideas, so far.
I'm really sorry that I duplicated some of them; hadn't realized it when I submitted. Great minds think alike, I guess. Oops.
Anyways, good luck guys. I hope I was able to offer some new insight, though.
Can't help it, but I do have another tip. Don't worry, no need to count this for the contest. I've just got so many ideas.
I'm sure you'll laugh a bit at this one too. It may seem redundant but researching how to find scholarships may lead you in the right direction. That tip may be the big break you need in finding the right scholarship since local scholarships (and local organizations that provide them, such as your church or temple) go under the radar.
Posted on February 2, 2008 10:47 PM
sweet! thanks jeremy for the finalist pick. :)
hey guys, i hope my advice helped at least a little bit. getting free money for college is pretty easy as long you're willing to dig around for it. like matthew, i can't help myself when it comes to giving out more advice: find sponsorship from a local company. a local company may be willing to give a few bucks for your college education. remember, be pursuasive and creative in how you convince them to give you free money. another option is to fundraise! i once heard about a guy who started a "penny drive" to fundraise for his college tuition. people around country heard about it and donated tons and tons of pennies. he ended up recieving about $100, 000 (i just keep thinking what a pain it must have been to count all those pennies).
well, that was my two cents (ha ha...get it!).
anyway, i'm just saying...a free zinch shirt + sarah's autograph is not too shabby. you know, it could be my belated zinch birthday/christmas present. :D
Posted on February 3, 2008 8:14 PM
Thnx for the list!!!!!!!
Posted on February 5, 2008 7:25 PM
The list provided above fairly accurately reflects good ways to earn money for tuition assistance. However, there are a few other important factors to bring to attention. One of the most assured methods for saving money is to work summer jobs, or possibly even during the school year. If your finances are effectively managed, you can save thousands of dollars over your high school career--and you have no bills to pay unlike after college. At an instate tuition rate, that is a significant amount of money. Also, applying for local scholarships increases your chances of winning because the pool of applicants is so much smaller. Even if you only win a few hundred dollars, at least your efforts will be rewarded. Finally, remember that college is not all about money--the education and experience will be probably be worth it even if you are left with student loans!
Posted on February 6, 2008 1:20 PM
Speaking of scholarships, around when does Zinch begin announcing finalists and winners for their scholarships?
Posted on February 20, 2008 11:22 AM
who ever won?
Posted on February 21, 2008 8:00 PM
After an intense round of voting by students from all over the world (literally), Nancy has emerged the victor, and to the victor go the spoils (or, in this case, really cool "I am more than a test score" t-shirts).
Nancy won both for the practicality of her idea to approach local companies (which is a very good, often overlooked option), and for the originality of applying to be a US senate page, which none of us here would have thought of.
So congrats Nancy! Your winnings are on the way.
Posted on February 27, 2008 11:52 AM