By Hailey Murphy
Tuition costs are a concern for any college student. Paying for education often results in thousands of dollars in loan debt. However, there’s another source of funding that may have slipped your mind.
It’s not a matter of if scholarship money exists– there are tons funds for college students on the state and federal level. It’s simply a matter of knowing where to look. So if you’re searching for some free college tuition, here are some places to go digging!
Western’s Scholarship Center has a variety of scholarship opportunities available directly from Western. These scholarships vary from departmental awards to diversity scholarships and graduate student awards. They’re available for viewing online, or you can visit the Scholarship Center in Old Main 285. The hallway leading to the office even has a corkboard of featured scholarships.
However, if you look on the Scholarship Center website right now, you might not find a lot. That’s because we’re just outside of what the Scholarship Center refers to as scholarship season.
“March through May is really the season for next year’s scholarships,” said Dina Murphy, Financial Aid Manager at the Scholarship Center. “There are year round scholarships that you could find, but that’s primarily when the scholarships are available, posted and due… [Western] wants to inform students before they leave for the summer so they know and can plan.”
That being said, you can start planning for scholarship season before the applications even go live. Murphy suggests preparing yourself to apply for scholarships now so that you’re ready with material when a scholarship does get posted.
“Get the resume cleaned up, because a lot of times scholarships are actually looking for resumes to be included,” said Murphy. “Start thinking about essays. Once you start writing, even free writing, you can get prepared and then with those applications, you’re just tweaking your essays around based on the specific criteria they’re looking for… Letters of recommendation– this is the quarter to get those letters of recommendation requested.”
Besides those listed on the Scholarship Center, there are more scholarships available to you, directly from Western, on their website. Each college, from the College of Business and Economics to Woodring College of Education, features college-specific scholarships on their webpage– they’re just a little tricky to find. If your college doesn’t have a scholarship tab on it’s main webpage, look in either “students” or “departments” for scholarship opportunities.
So what about private scholarships, outside of Western? If you don’t already know, there’s a great website called Washboard.org that gives scholarships to Washington state students, whether they come from out of state or not. You fill out a detailed profile and the website matches you with applications you qualify for.
There are a number of websites that do this very thing, such as unigo or scholarships.com. However, washboard.org gives you scholarships that are both local and national, so you have the option to apply for scholarships that’ll have less applicants.
“You want to work within your own college and department, clearly, because that’s a smaller cohort of students… Those are the places you want to start,” said Murphy
There are also private scholarships available for viewing on the Scholarship Center’s webpage, which are sought after by Scholarship Center staff.
Another option for funding your college education are grants. Grants are often need-based and are granted through FAFSA or WAFSA, so make sure to fill yours out each year. It’s now passed the financial aid priority deadline, but applications can still be sent in for the 2018/2019 school year.