Tips for getting Unclaimed College Scholarships

unclaimed college scholarships
Unclaimed Scholarship Tips

When the scholarship season for the colleges comes to a close in this summer, there will be unused scholarships, or unclaimed scholarships with millions of dollars left over.

According to the statistics only one student out of ten full time students studying at a four year college had some sort of scholarship, and the average amount for that is just $2,815.

ABCnews.go.com, how to pay for the college tuition fees is clearly on people’s minds.

The staff over at Scholarship America actually saw an increase in the number of calls that they receive from families and they also noticed that the callers had more urgency in their tones.

Even the Kentucky campus of Berea college, a college which gives all the accepted students full-tuition scholarships, saw a rise in 15% of applicants this year round and the number of families trying to get the free application of federal student aid almost jumped by 21%in the first three months of this year.

What are the reasons for this?

Students either don’t apply at the correct time or they are not applying for scholarships at all.

Some tips are:

  • · Start early: many of the scholarships are only available to junior year high schoolers. Also there are many scholarship sponsors who offer mentoring to these students and start tracking them in junior high.
  • · Avoid errors: errors should be avoided on your application at all costs. All the directions should be followed very closely and the essay should be proofed several times.
  • · Remember accomplishments: a high school student should keep in mind all the sports or community or science achievements that he or she has so that when the senior year comes they have a ready list to refer to.
  • · Shop around for Recommendation Letters: never assume that a favorite teacher will hand out a recommendation letter. Even if the teacher thinks that you’re the best student, the writing skills of the teacher may not be very good. So you should look for all the potential teachers who can write you a good recommendation letter.

Some examples of awards that get under-applied to are the AXA achievement scholarship awards $25,000 to students who help their community on a large scale. Another is the National Wild Turkey Federation which usually offers up to $10,000 to students who hold a valid license to hunt and are active in their communities.

According to www.investopedia.com, there is a myth that there are usually millions of dollars of unclaimed scholarships. This is a myth created by fraudulent organizations that usually charge students for scholarship searches. Most of these unrewarded scholarship monies usually comes from scholarship programs which are very restrictive and only a very small pool of applicants are actually eligible for it.

For example a scholarship for color blind left handed females from Wisconsin would probably result in funds which are left over. And families should be very careful because when they get desperate for these scholarships they might fall prey to educational internet scams, charging fees for information you can get entirely free off the internet yourself by just searching for it.

Marvin Carmichael, a past chairman of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has his viewpoint that gives a statistic that usually 85% of the scholarships which are termed to be unclaimed scholarships are basically employer backed education benefits. Many don’t apply to them and there are millions of dollars left unclaimed, or unused.

Also, the experts advise people not to pay private firms to look for these so called unclaimed scholarship dollars as you could do the same for yourself, by searching on the internet. Many of these offers are usually scams, and even the most legitimate of the searches don’t usually offer what a student himself could look up for free on the internet or from the school guidance counselor.

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