As the school year begins to come to a close, and many seniors are preparing for their next steps in life, including higher education. Preparing for college comes with looking for how to pay for tuition, and while looking to prevent student debt can be stressful, there are many resources students can use to pay for their education, the most common being scholarships. However, many students don’t know how to access scholarships fully.

Elena Hernandez from the Don Lugo Career Center mentions multiple scholarship finding websites including Scholarships.com, fastweb.com, and scholarshipowl.com. However, she explains when it comes to students knowing they can access these websites, “I think about 50% of students know.”  Students should be extra diligent in their scholarship search, being careful of scam sites.

The Don Lugo website allows students to easily find these websites and more information on scholarships under the Academics and Counseling tabs. Many resources with links are provided for students to find scholarships as well as learn which scholarships are scams or not. There are a variety of scholarships to choose from, and the criteria for them can range from being a United States citizen, taking part in school sports and extracurricular activities, participating in contests, and being more involved in one’s community. It’s never too late to find scholarships!

Most scholarships will require students to fill out an application for their eligibility for the scholarship.  Once again, these can range in difficulty depending on the scholarship, from writing an essay to providing how tall a student is. The amount of time it will take for results to come in depends on the type of scholarship, but applicants will receive emails notifying them of their results when the time comes.  If students are concerned about results and something seems to have gone wrong, don’t be afraid to call the scholarship provider, sometimes it is the only way to get in contact!

It is always worth checking out and applying for scholarships, especially during senior year. Students planning to move on to a UC or Cal State university will find scholarships very beneficial in the long run.  Students should try to alleviate debt as much as possible, which can be greatly helped by scholarships.