Scholarships

A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further their education. Scholarships are awarded based upon various criteria, which usually reflect the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award. Scholarship money is not required to be repaid.

The term '"scholarship"' is sometimes used to describe any financial aid given to a student that does not have to be repaid. However, more precisely, and universally among college financial aid offices in the United States, scholarships and grants are quite different.

A scholarship is given to a student because of a reason: the student has qualified for or won it by academic, artistic or athletic ability, or by agreeing to follow a particular career, or has some special ethnic or other characteristic. Scholarships are not given for financial need alone. In contrast, a grant is an entitlement: approval is automatic if the students meet qualifications, based on financial need.

The most common scholarships may be classified as:

Of increasing interest in the United States are "last dollar" scholarships. These can be provided by private and government-based institutions, and are intended to cover the remaining fees charged to a student after the various grants are taken into account. To prohibit institutions from taking last dollar scholarships into account, and thereby removing other sources of funding, these scholarships are not offered until after financial aid has been offered in the form of a letter. Furthermore, last dollar scholarships may require families to have filed taxes for the most recent year; received their other sources of financial aid; and not yet received loans.

It is typical for people to find scholarships in their home regions. Information on these can be found by asking local institutions and organizations. Typically, these are less competitive as the eligible population is smaller.

It has become more prevalent today that scholarships are misconceived to have a discriminatory quality to them. For example, as demonstrated by student-specific scholarships, minorities are thought to have a priority over Caucasian students when it comes to receiving these scholarships.

These beliefs are known to come from college students themselves who have been affected by their failures at obtaining adequate financial aid. Mark Kantrowitz, author of "Secrets to Winning a Scholarship", explains that the average family tends to overestimate its student's eligibility for merit-based awards and underestimate its eligibility for need-based awards. In turn, the most persistent target of this disapproval tends to be high-profile, minority-based scholarships.

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Wikipedia