Speaker 1: Many parents and students that I have met and talked to, they are saying, you know, we we've submitted dozens of applications but we haven't received anything when they find us and they are completely exasperated. A lot of times when I talk to them though, I ask them, well what scholarships are you applying to? And most of the time they actually are applying to what I call scholarship scams. Now if you end up applying to these, I'll tell you what I'm talking about. If you and your student have been looking at these, don't worry, I got sucked into them as well. But after this video you're gonna know exactly which ones we actually want to apply to and which ones we want to avoid. I'm also gonna share with you where we can find legitimate scholarships with less competition. So that way you and your student can start making headway when it comes to securing scholarships for college, rather than just adding more and more spam emails to our inbox. Hello, my name is Jocelyn Pineda-Pearson. I'm the founder of the Scholarship System and Debt-for-Degree Lab. And I've been doing this for pretty much a decade, where my own experience, I was able to secure six figures in scholarships, graduate debt-free, and literally receive an over-the-check every single semester to help pay for excess expenses with college. And for well over five years now, we've been helping thousands of families across the country do exactly that. Now one of the biggest areas that I see families have a challenge with is simply finding the right scholarships to apply to. Now I'm gonna share a link below on a free training to show you even more about this, but for now I want to explain what kind of scholarships we want to avoid, which ones we want to look for, and where we can find those. So what is a scholarship scam? Now maybe this is a tough term, but pretty much they are scholarships that are based on luck. If it is called an easy scholarship or a no-essay scholarship or something where your student just has to enter their name to win $10,000 every single week drawing, that kind of thing, if it takes your student less than five minutes, the chances of it being legitimate are very slim. One of the things we talk about in the scholarship system, our program for families on paying for college, we talk about the scholarship spectrum, where we have one end of legitimate scholarships and one end where there are scams. And what we want to do is slowly work our way, of course, to the higher chances of it being legitimate, because that means that we actually increase our chances of winning because it's actually winnable, and it's better worth our time, right? So a lot of families, they think, well, if these scholarships only take a few minutes, why not just have my student do them? The thing is, again, I've been doing this for over a decade. I have yet to see a single student win any of those. So we're not a big fan of those. We don't want to look at scholarships as something that's based on luck. We want to look at scholarships as something that is within our control, where we can make ourselves more and more competitive as we go. So that means that that helps us decipher what is a legitimate scholarship. So when we're looking for a legitimate scholarship, one of the things that we are talking about here are ones that are actually based on competitiveness. Do they ask for essays? Do they ask for materials? Do they ask for recommendation letters? Any kind of materials that can show the competitiveness that our student has. So that way, their decision is being based on qualities, characteristics, involvement, etc., rather than it just being a lucky draw of the hat, okay? So that is what we're looking for. Now, when we're looking for these scholarships, you might be thinking, well, this is gonna take a lot more time to find them. This is gonna take a lot more time to actually submit them, and it will upfront for your students. But like I'm going to cover in another video coming out soon, it can take a lot less time when we know how to reuse materials and create an actual system out of the process. But even still, say we spend 15 minutes on the scholarship scams, or the sweepstakes scholarships is what they're also called. If we're submitting 10 of those, we could instead take that time and submit one legitimate one where we are creating quality materials, we actually have a chance of winning because it's legitimate, and we can reuse those materials. Then in the long run, our time is way better spent. So let's get into where to find these scholarships. So I am going to, again, link to a free training below where I show you some slides and walk you through actual searches that I do. But just to give you a few places to begin, first and foremost, we always want to look local. One of the easiest places to look local is through our high school. A lot of times local high schools will have lists of scholarships, of local scholarships. Maybe they put them inside the portal where you have a login, a back end, maybe it's Blackboard, Navion, somewhere like that. Or maybe they just have them on their website, on their public page, their website. Maybe they have a scholarship page or the advising office, the counselor's office page. So they have scholarships that are local that they can share. Now with this, I always recommend our students still go in and ask them because sometimes, believe it or not, they'll forget to put some on there. So I found some scholarships that were not even listed on there before, and so this is a huge tip. So make sure you write that one down. Now beyond high schools, we also want to think about what is in our nearest network. What is in our students' network? What is in our network? So when I'm saying that, I mean, is there a local PTA, PTSA, Rogues Club, Rotary Club? Can we look at local grocery stores, doctors offices, law offices? Where do you work? Where do the parents work? Where do grandparents work if they're working? Do they offer scholarships? So looking within our network to see if they have local scholarships. We've seen construction companies, grocery stores, credit unions, I mean, so many local organizations in the area offering scholarships. So these are also the lowest-hanging fruit, right? Because they are local, they have less competition naturally, and so we have a higher chance of winning. So remember, we're always trying to tip the scale in our favor by finding ways to improve our chances of winning, and finding those local, less competitive scholarships is a huge piece of that. Now another place that we can look is, of course, through the university. So if your student is already at college, that's completely fine too. I would still actually look at our local organizations back at our hometown, but now we can also look for local organizations at our university town. So even college students can use this strategy when they're looking for scholarships. Now the one thing I want to decipher between this, these are primarily external scholarships, or private scholarships we call them. So this is in addition to finding scholarships through the universities, which we call merit scholarships. So you want to keep that in mind when we're talking about finding these local scholarships, they are considered private scholarships. But going through the university, that's a whole nother video, and you can find more money through them as well. Now one of my favorite places to find scholarships is through Google. You might be thinking, well of course we're going to Google scholarships. However, we use it in a very unique way. So make sure that in the description we linked to my free training, and it's all about my six steps to securing scholarships. But I actually walk you through how I use Google in a very unique way to uncover scholarships that aren't even on the big search engines. They are not on the the main websites, but the chances of them being legitimate are way higher because we're actually finding ways to go directly to the sources of the scholarships, rather than wasting our time on search engines, etc. So make sure you register. The training is linked in the description. The last one I want to talk about are search engines. So a lot of people ask about what search engine can we go to. Honestly, with our families in the scholarship system, this is typically our last line of defense when it comes to looking for scholarships. We usually try to go through all of our other options before we go to these. The reason being, everyone is going to these. So again, we want to look where no one else is looking. We want to find scholarships that no one else is finding. And search engines actually charge scholarship providers to list their scholarship. In fact, through the scholarship system, we give out thousands of dollars every year. And we looked into listing on a main scholarship search engine, and they wanted a lot of money to be able to do that, which I would rather put into an award. So there are a lot of scholarships that are not on those search engines. That said, I'm going to link to a separate video where I talk about the latest scholarship search engines. I keep that separate for a reason, so that I can update that video every single year with the latest sites that we like. But again, that typically is our last line of defense. Now when we're looking on websites, I do want to say a lot of times you have to use my rules of scam versus legitimate. So you want to look for ones, again, that take longer than five minutes. These search engines a lot of times will have those sweepstakes scholarships, those no essay, easy to win, monthly drawings, weekly drawings. You'll see a lot of those on these search engines. So when you're going, if you do use the search engines, the scholarship websites where you can just punch in a few criteria and find the list, make sure that you're deciphering, is this legitimate or is this not? Because we don't want to waste anyone's time on illegitimate scholarships, okay? We want to look for ones that are actually based on competitiveness. So it's important to remember that. Now I want to give you just one quick search that you can do to uncover a ton of local scholarships. So what I want you to do is in a separate tab, open up Google and search your city's name or your county name plus the word community foundation scholarships. So say you are from Charleston, you could do Charleston community foundation scholarships. Say you're from Orlando, Orlando community foundation scholarships. Do that one search and come back here and comment, did anything come up? Did you see any kind of results? Now in the free training I talk about what specifically to look for, which websites to click. I have screenshots and stuff, but that is just one of the searches and how I use Google to uncover local scholarships that have less competition or even national scholarships that have less competition. So comment below, did you find anything? Did you not? Or comment below with one of the searches that you are doing or one of the local organizations that you have found scholarships through. Let's brainstorm together and read through the comments and see if you have any ideas that come from someone else. Now don't forget to click a thumbs up if you found this helpful. Also click the subscribe button because every single week I'm releasing a new video on another tip on paying for college without student loan debt and securing scholarships so you don't want to miss out. So click the subscribe button and make sure that you register for that free training in the description where I show you more detail on where you can find legitimate scholarships with less competition so that your student can have a higher chance of winning that money. I'll see you in the next video.