Find College Scholarships

College scholarships are an important way to help finance your college education, be it at Harvard or elsewhere. There are many places to look for scholarships:

• Counselor's Office: A great place to start! Most guidance counselors will maintain filing cabinets with scholarship information. They will also typically be the exclusive location for information on school and local scholarships.
  
  
• Local Community Groups: Are you involved in a community group? Are your parents? Such groups often award scholarships to deserving local high school students who are somehow affiliated with them.
  
  
• Parents' Employers: Same idea as local groups.
  
  
• The Internet: Many websites like FastWeb have college scholarship information. The downside to such sites though is that everyone sees the same information, so either you will not qualify for the scholarship, or the competition is fierce.
  

Scholarships

Scholarships are awards given for a variety reasons that usually reward the recipients with cash to go to college. Here are some reasons why you should apply for scholarships, and some things to be aware of:

Advantages

• Scholarships help you practice your applying skills
• Financial assistance
• Prestige
• Something more to list on your application as an award

Disadvantages

• Applying takes time, time which could be used on other activities/pursuits
• There is no guarantee of success, no matter how good your application is
• Harvard, and many other schools, will deduct any money you win from scholarships from your financial aid award. Thus, the only direct benefit you can receive from scholarships is if you win enough to money to cover your tuition entirely (which is quite hard to do)
• While particular groups will have scholarships targeted for them (Native Americans, for example), there are few general scholarships based solely on academic achievement
• As a rule of thumb, you should expect to win one scholarship for every 10 you apply to, but this could vary widely for each particular individual

The list of disadvantages may look long. However, on the whole, I think it is worthwhile to try for scholarships, but do not do this in lieu of studying for your classes or the SATs. The skills you learn in applying for scholarships will serve you well in applying for college and beyond.