The Scholarship Search
Thousands of scholarships and fellowships are awarded to college students every year. Unlike student loans, students do not have to pay back scholarships when they have been awarded. Generally, students receive scholarships for academic, athletic or artistic talent. Scholarships are also given to students who have a special academic interest, who are members of an underrepresented group or who demonstrate financial need.

Many students don't realize just how many scholarships are available for the taking. November is National Scholarship Month. Here are two free resources we gathered from www.finaid.org/scholarships that you can share with your student for conducting his own scholarship search:

• FastWeb Scholarship Search (www.fastweb.com) is the largest, most accurate and most frequently updated scholarship database on the Internet, according to www.finaid.org/scholarships. If you supply them with an email address, they will notify you when new scholarships that match your profile become available.
  
  
• The College Board's FUND FINDER scholarship database annually updates its list of scholarships and other types of financial aid programs from more than 3,000 national, state, public and private sources.

Also encourage your student to head over to the career center to see what additional resources they have available to students. Many college students forget that the career center offers services beyond just preparing for graduate school and the post-college job search. Career counselors are well versed in helping students at every stage of the college experience, including pointing them to great scholarship resources.