.png)
College TNT
Helping students and families navigate to and through college!
College TNT
More Tips for Finding Scholarships!
Unlock the secrets to securing scholarships that ease the financial burden of college education! Learn how dedicating just one "Scholarship Power Hour" each week can transform your approach to finding those elusive opportunities. Use social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to uncover scholarships that others might overlook. You'll also discover how tools like Pomofocus can help you maintain laser-sharp focus during your search. Don't pass by those hidden gems that aren't on the first page of Google results—as they often come with less competition.
In anticipation of next week's tips on crafting meaningful scholarship and college application essays, I'll highlight the critical role a well-written essay plays in catching the attention of admission panels.
With these tips, you'll be better prepared to present your best self in your applications, both for college and scholarships. So, join me on College TNT as I support you in making your college dreams a reality, one step at a time.
For more about me - my experience and my speaking, check out the links below.
You can reach me at jen@firstgenfm.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenschoen/
https://www.firstgenfm.com/speaker-high-school-educators-students-parents
Hello and welcome back, or welcome to College TNT, the podcast and YouTube video series that is designed to get you for college, help you navigate the college admissions process and then make a smooth transition through your first year of college. So that's what I'm here to talk about today and every day. Today, I want to focus on finding scholarships. Now, in my previous episode, I gave three, three and a half tips on finding scholarships, so I want to give three more tips today that I hope you will find very helpful, as you're looking for money to pay for college and, of course, who isn't looking for money to pay for college, right? So my very first tip is to create and set aside an hour a week just to search for and apply to scholarships. I think you can do it in an hour a week just to search for and apply to scholarships. I think you can do it in an hour a week. Of course, if you're finding so many scholarships, you need to get more time. That's great, but start by setting aside an hour that's consistent every week, because what you'll find is it'll become a habit, you'll get into doing it and it will go faster for you as you do it every single week, because you'll know exactly the tips and tricks, will go faster for you as you do it every single week, because you'll know exactly the tips and tricks to use and how to search for those scholarships and then you'll get into applying for those scholarships also during that same hour. So highly recommend your scholarship power hour every week and if you're worried at all about focus when you're sitting down for that time, I highly recommend a website called pomofocus, p-o-m-o-f-o-c-u-s dot I-O. It has a timer there so you can just go to it and know when the timer goes off you can take a little break and start back up again to fill that full hour. So pomofocusio is a great resource for you to use when you're doing your scholarship search and applications.
Speaker 1:So that's tip number one. Tip number two is to use your social media skills. Now, whether you're a family member, parent or student, I know you know what social media is and I'm sure you have some connection to social media somewhere. So use those connections to find scholarships. You may follow the colleges that you're looking at on Instagram, on Facebook I know that's old school, but yes, look on Facebook, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, some of the educational organizations that may offer scholarships that I've talked about previously, like College Greenlight, the College Board. Don't just look at the websites. Also look at what they're putting out into their social media, because they may be giving also tips and tricks on scholarships, but letting you know about what scholarships are available. You can follow me on Instagram at college underscore TNT and at Facebook at college TNT, and I will share different tips as well. I recently shared, perfect in time for Halloween the Zombie Apocalypse Scholarship and yes, that is a real thing and it was $2,000. So a significant scholarship that you could apply for that talks about what would you do in a zombie apocalypse. What a cool essay to write. So, anyway, follow those places and you'll find some great scholarship activities, and I know you know more about social media than I do. So use X, use Reddit, linkedin, all of those places where you may be able to find scholarships, and I can recommend on X, the scholarship system is a great place. They give daily tips as well as promoting different scholarships that they know are available. So check out the scholarship system on X. If you're on there my guess is they're probably on Blue Sky too. So wherever you get your social media stuff, check that out.
Speaker 1:My third tip so we've talked about the Scholarship Power Hour, we've talked about using social media which certainly you could use during your Scholarship Power Hour if you're only looking for scholarships is to use the power of quotation marks, and I posted a little bit about this on Instagram, I think two weeks ago. But quotation marks can be very helpful when you're doing a Google search, and not just for scholarships, but also if you're doing any kind of research, for a research paper, whether in high school or college. So what I mean by that is, if you put quotation marks around a phrase or around a word and then put and or or in between the words that you're looking at, you will get very different scholarship searches, quotation mark, scholarship, quotation mark. Then that is going to bring up a series of websites and places for you to look for scholarships for people who are interested in majoring in English or who are majoring in English if you're already in college. You can do the same with equestrian events and scholarships. You can also put quotation marks at just the beginning and the end of the phrase. So with English, so you do quotation marks, english and scholarships, end of quotation marks and put that in, and your search engine will turn up slightly different searches depending on where you put the quotation marks. So play around with that, because that can be a really powerful tool. Just those little quotation marks. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm making air quotes. If you're not watching on YouTube and you're listening on the podcast, trust me, I am doing air quotes very silently, so you can use those quotation marks to help you search for things.
Speaker 1:My sort of sub tip along with that is don't just look at the first three websites that come up when you do that scholarship search. Go ahead and keep scrolling. Maybe go to the second page, the third page, because what you'll find is the people who are paying to be in the search are going to show up first, right, and they'll probably be the more competitive scholarships. As you keep scrolling, though, you'll find other scholarships. Maybe they're smaller scholarships, maybe they're not as well known, but they are also scholarships that may be less competitive. So go ahead and apply for them. So those three tips creating and consistently doing your scholarship power hour, using social media to find scholarships, and then the power of quotation marks.
Speaker 1:When you do larger searches, like Google or Bing or Yahoo or any of those sites, please use your quotation marks and experiment, play around with that and see what you find, and see if you find different things, like I did when I was doing various searches. As I mentioned before, you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram, but what would be super helpful to me is, if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe and then, if you're listening on the podcast, please go ahead and rate this podcast. I hope you'll give me five stars If you write a review. That's really special to me and I would greatly appreciate it. You'd make my day because that helps other people find it. So share this with other high school students, with other college students and with families that you know are looking for some good information.
Speaker 1:That's it for me this week. I will be back next week and I'm going to talk a little bit about scholarship and college application essay tips, because I know you're going to want to hear some of these tips that I have, and if you're still not quite done applying, you're waiting for your essay to be fantastic and you keep looking at it and looking at it. I'm going to have some tips about that too. So tune in next week and I will look forward to seeing you then. Thank you so much for joining me on College TNT. Bye now.