What is the best way to apply for college grants?

What about getting info from the Financial Aid office at the colleges you are interested in?Rarely do people get good scholarships because they are redheads and play the tuba.

Ask your financial aid office. Often you can fill out a single form, attach the proper references, etc, and the school will submit it for you to all open benefactors whose requirements you meet.

So it is best to select a college first and have them point me in the right direction for aid?

@Darbio16 I’m sure any prospective colleges would be willing to tell you the procedure of applying for a grant if you emailed their financial aid office, though to proceed any further you may have to have already selected to attend that college.

If you are in high school, you school district has an office of financial aid you can work with. If you are already out of high school, you can hire a financial aid counselor to help you find the aid you need, or check with you local public colleges.

http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ that’s where I always start. I get all my education paid for with Pell Grants.

@casheroo: Along with the Pell grants (has the name changed?), weren’t you obligated to take out loans and do work/study also?

@gailcalled No. It’s all covered, my books and anything else essential (such as notebooks and pencils), and then I receive a check of the remaining balanace each semester…not a lot, but it’s still something.

Your high school guidance counselor will have books and CD-ROMs with listings of people giving away scholarship money. Some public libraries will also have a book with a listing of charitable foundations.

Beyond that, any college that is reasonably large or reasonably old will have thousands to millions of dollars in scholarship money to award: someone left money to his or her alma mater to fund the education of left-handed violinists with red hair who planned to major in English, and if you qualify, they’ll give you the money, because it’s one of the ways they maintain their tax-exempt nonprofit status.

@gailcalled: When I was in school, I was obligated to take out loans (something like $2500/semester) and contribute either money or workstudy time, and I think everyone on financial aid was required to do so. Other schools may have other policies, especially if they aren’t traditional residential colleges where 100% of freshmen live on-campus and attend school full-time.

The Pell Grant program still has the same name.