Sat Test

There are a great many things to consider when you are making decisions regarding your higher education. What I’d like to talk about right now are financial options for your college years.

I had a lot of friends who worked nearly full time during their undergraduate years. It wasn’t always easy for them, but they did it. Working a job and going to school at the same time means that you really need to be able to manage your time in the best possible way. Scheduling your classes around your work, or your work around your classes requires a great deal of planning. If you must work, then perhaps a school that offers night school would be an excellent choice for you to consider. Another option would be to work part time while you’re going to school. If you don’t have to have a job during your college years, then that would be great for you. However, if you don’t have enough money to sustain yourself while going to college, then you need to look into other avenues of financial aid.

Some students have their education funded by their parents, but not everyone can count on that source of help. Others may find that their grandparents have set up college funds for them, and that’s wonderful.

However, if you’re like me, you don’t have either source of financial aid available. You might just be on your own. Don’t worry though, there are numerous avenues to take explore that will enable you to get your degree. I’ll discuss some of them here.

Scholarships are an invaluable source of money for students. There are the typical scholarships for athletes, those for musicians, those for academically gifted students, and those targeted for students studying specific disciplines. You can search for scholarships online, or talk to your high school counselor for more information on where to search. Some scholarships are given for reasons you might not have considered before, such as scholarships given by alumni of a high school for their descendants. One such high school is in Seattle, Washington. It gives out scholarships to students who have parents or grandparents who have attended that high school.

If you’re left handed, you’re in luck! A school in PA is giving away two $1,000 scholarships to two lucky south paws.

Another wacky scholarship is given out by the Klingon Language Institute. You don’t need to be familiar with the Klingon language, you just need to plan on studying it while you’re at college.

Perhaps you’ve had the pleasure of reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and were so excited that you wrote an essay on it! Well you’re now in the running for an annual $10,000 scholarship from the Ayn Rand Institute for an essay on her book.

If you’re a world class duck caller you might be in the running for the Chick and Sophie Major Memorial Duck Calling Contest scholarship.

As you can see by these few examples, there are creative ways to get financial aid in your search for higher education. Search high and low and don’t leave any stones unturned in your quest. I’ll have more excellent ideas for creative solutions for financial aid in my next blog post.

Just remember that one of the things I mentioned in a previous blog post was the fact that finding a school that is accredited is important. Attending an accredited school is a requirement for receiving student loans and grants and scholarships.

In a lot of my previous posts I’ve talked about the SAT, about getting ready for college and university admissions, about colleges and what they are looking for in potential freshman. In my last post I talked about what technical and vocational schools might have to offer you. You have so many choices facing you as you finish high school.

I remember the feeling of excitement and anxiety and thrill and fear and sense of something really huge coming at me when I was a senior. It’s all rolled into one big emotional roller coaster. Some people prefer to just let life come at them without making plans. Other’s want their lives mapped out to the most minute degree possible so there’s no possibility of coming up against something unexpected.

You can plan for your future, and you should. But you should also be aware that life can throw some interesting curve balls at you, no matter how much you prepare. Plan as well as you can and remember to be flexible.

Financial planning is absolutely a must for you, if you’re planning on college. Unless you are extremely wealthy or have a trust fund that will take care of you, you’re going to need to a way to finance your education.

If money is a big issue with you, in that you don’t have any, then you need to find a way to fund your education.

In my last blog post I talked about your options as far as choosing a Technical school or a Vocational School. Did you know that you can get student loans to go to those kinds of schools, as well as a four year university?

There are a great many companies that will trip over themselves to give you a student loan. If you google “how do I get a student loan?” you will come up with over thirty-five million results. So as you can see, there is no dearth (another great SAT vocabulary word!) of information on how to get a student loan.

If you’ve decided on a Technical School, then you need to find out what kinds of financial aid help they can offer their students. Most, if not all, schools will have a financial aid office where you can go to get more information. Make an appointment to speak to the financial aid officer there at the school to learn about your options.

In my next post I’ll discuss in more detail just what steps you should take in order to secure financial aid for your education.