[nabs-l] Different places to get Scholarships?

Tue Jul 24 18:50:54 UTC 2012

Brandon:

You ask a very important question. I divided my senior year into
halves. I spent the fall applying for schools and the spring applying
for scholarships. This isn't always the best way, but that's what I
ended up doing. There are a plethora of resources regarding
scholarships. I would first look at the schools in which you are
applying. Your application for admission will put you into some
scholarship pools if basic criteria like GPA or SAT score are met. But
some universities have more competitive scholarship programs that have
separate applications. Even if you are already a student, many
entities on campus have awards. For example, if you have been
volunteering with the counseling clinic on campus, they might have a
scholarship program. I know the psychology department at my school did
a scholarship, and so did our chapter of Psi Chi. Sometimes these
awards are smaller, but anything helps, and within university
recognition will always help you if you want to apply for other
accolades like doing an honors project or working in a research lab.

You missed a couple of blindness-related scholarships. I know the
Jewish Guild for the Blind gives out a nice award each year which is
pretty competitive. Also, several Lions clubs have scholarship
programs. Many Lions clubs accept applications from sighted students
as well because of the lack of competition among blind students in a
local area.

www.fastweb.net is a potential resource. I personally thought it an
absolute mess, but it would be worth your time setting up a profile.
It is a giant database of scholarships, and you can enter in all of
your information, and it will pull up scholarships that you are
supposedly eligible for. Supposedly is an important word though. You
need to triple check. You will see lots of giant scholarship programs
for corporate companies like Coke and Wal-Mart. Go ahead and fill them
out. The applications take about 5 minutes. But the way I see it is
that if that is all the effort you have to put into the application,
the winner is basically drawn. It wouldn't hurt to dedicate a small
fraction of your time to those applications though just to test your
luck. But you have to be careful. Any application asking for sensitive
information should be carefully scrutinized. You should never provide
your social security number or credit card number. Yeah, some
scholarships are definitely gimmicks to get your money. Why anyone
would pay money to win a scholarship, I don’t know. So the moral of
the story is that fastweb can be good, but as you will see in the
following paragraph, local is better. If you are applying for
scholarships based on financial need, you might have to provide your
ssn. But, I would talk to a resource in person such as the examples I
am about to give, because they will know the legit financial need
based scholarships.

Every school has some type of scholarship office. If you are in high
school, it will be in the guidance counselor's office. If you are in
college, then there will probably be an entire office dedicated to it
or somehow connected to financial aid. These offices are the best in
my opinion, because they have information about local scholarships.
Local scholarships are better, because they might present less
competition. If a scholarship requires that you attend a school in NC,
or whatever state you're from, or if it even requires that you went to
a certain high school, or to school in a certain city, you could be
narrowing your competition. However, the bigger advantage is that your
local involvement will mean more to the scholarship committee. There
will likely be members with kids who do the same volunteering, or
members that still volunteer with the organizations in which you are
involved. I received 4 scholarships my freshman year of college, and 3
of them were local scholarships given to me at the awards ceremony my
senior year. Look for state-wide applications as well. Some pan
disability organizations offer scholarships. One of mine came from a
family in NC who had a son with a disability who unfortunately passed
away. So the family set up a scholarship for anyone with a disability.

The possibilities are endless, and as you can see, scholarship finding
and applying can become a full-time job. So I would encourage you to
concentrate on scholarships that are really looking for the strengths
that you have or scholarships in which you fit more than the average
criteria. Blindness-related scholarships are a great resource, but I
would encourage you to get out of that mold. I personally enjoyed the
2 scholarships I had with interviews, because it gave me a second
chance to prove myself, and many locally based scholarships conduct
interviews with their top candidates.

Cindy

On 7/24/12, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I thought this thread would be good for those of us in college and in high
> school.
> Where can one get scholarships?
> The NFB has their large 30 scholarship program:
> http://www.nfb.org/scholarship-program
> ACB has their smaller but still substantial scholarship program:
> http://acb.org/node/148
> Light House has a rather large scholarship:
> http://www.lighthouse.org/services-and-assistance/scholarship-award-programs/
> AFB Has scholarships:
> https://www.afb.org/section.aspx?Documentid=2962
> CCLVI:
> http://www.cclvi.org/scholarships/
> ABC:
> http://www.abc.org/Education_Training/Scholarships.aspx
> Association of Blind Citizens
> http://www.blindcitizens.org/abc_scholarship.htm
> Learning Ally
> http://www.learningally.org/Scholarship-Opportunities-Information/615/
>
> Your financial aid should have a website or list of places to get
> scholarships. There are scholarships like the Jack Kent Cook Foundation:
> http://www.jkcf.org/
> and all the other places listed on this page:
> http://www.radford.edu/~nchc/other-links.htm
> Gates, Churchill, Carnegie, Goldwater, Javits... All those rich families
> have scholarships.
> clubs like 4-H, Girl Scouts, Pathfinders, FFA, ROTC, Basketball,
> Toastmaster's...
> Interest groups like NAACP, National Rifle Association and the Christian
> Coalition also have scholarships.
>
> I'd like to know where other people get their scholarships from?
> Where do sighted people get scholarships? The above is mostly scholarships
> for the blind...
> Thanks,
>
> Brandon Keith Biggs
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> nabs-l:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/clb5590%40gmail.com
>

-- 
Cynthia Bennett
B.A. Psychology, UNC Wilmington

clb5590 at gmail.com
828.989.5383