How can I find college scholarships?

How to find scholarships and money for college, when I'm not unique enough to qualify or win?

• I'm currently in my last year of college and would really like to find some scholarships for college, but my problem is that I'm in the percentage of people who just don't get recognized. What I mean by that is, I'm 21, female, white, and come from a middle class home. This isn't a racist thing at all, but it is so hard finding money for school because I'm not a minority or from a specifically hard background. My dad works for the auto industry and I guess my family is considered middle to lower class these days because of how he is barely holding on to his job. When I get my fafsa and stuff done the numbers come out to make my parents look like they have money, but that is only because they have had to take money out of my dad's retirement just to live on. I've been trying to get any money for school since high school, but so far have only gotten 1 scholarship (and it was one that everyone got). I've applied to so many scholarships, but I'm just not unique enough to get them. I graduated with a 3.8 in high school and currently have a 3.4 in college, but my college is a small private school with no real programs to work with to raise my appeal for scholarships. In order to support myself I have a part time job that takes up all my free time, so I'm not able to expand my volunteering experience. My school only offers one scholarship a year and it is very very hard to get. The school has given me grants, but they are barely anything and even when my family explained our financial hardships they still didn't raise it. I just don't know where to find money these days. I have tried fastweb.com and other scholarship sites, tried getting random grants, tried talking to the financial aid dept at school, but it's so hard. So how can a young, white, female, who is not the first in her family to go to college, from a middle class family, with an avg gpa, and not much time to volunteer...supposed to find money to pay for college?

• Answer:

  With that high of a GPA you could have gotten a transfer scholarship and gone to a bigger school but you do have quite the dilemma. You can ask your dad to look into any scholarships that his job offers to the children of workers or you can look into getting a job that offers tuition reimbursement. That is where as long as you are in good standing with the company (work on time, no complaints) your job will refund you on tuition and fees. Good Luck. .....Given the type of work you do I would serously talk to someone at my job to see if they know of anything that can help you. You cannot file independant if you are really a dependant (that could come back on you). I would say to find a new job that could offer the tuition reimbursment (unless you plan to keep your job after graduation) or you can try to locate some scholarships that are given for your degree. In my state there are grants that are offered to students with high GPA's you might want to go to see a financial aid adviser to see if there is anything out there that you qualify for that you have not been applying for.