Scholarship Money Available for Students  with Career Direction

Many parents and students know that there are scholarships tied to financial need and academic merit. Other scholarships are available based on ethnicity, religious affiliation, geographic location, leadership ability, talent, athletic ability, and even to very specific groups such as cancer survivors. However, when students know their career direction, they find that a host of additional scholarships are available to them.

Did you know that many scholarship dollars are left on the table each year for lack of applicants? This is particularly true for smaller, less visible scholarship sources. Awards can range from $500 to $10,000 or more. Students can apply for any scholarships for which they qualify. Time invested in the application process can help whittle down their cost of attendance. Several smaller scholarships do add up! Invest some time and you may get a big payoff.

How can you find these scholarships? One route is to investigate the scholarships available at your student’s college, especially those offered at the department level of his or her intended major. It’s best to do the research as early as possible and pay strict attention to application requirements and deadlines.

Professional organizations represent another great resource for uncovering career or college major related scholarship dollars. For instance, the Landscape Architecture Foundation lists 16 scholarships on its website, and the LAF only represents one of several associations for the landscape architecture field.

Some additional examples of scholarships offered by professional organizations:

• Scholarships for women engineers
• Scholarships for teachers and education majors
• Scholarships for male nurses

After you check an international or national organization’s website, see if there is a state or local chapter offering scholarships as well. And here’s a search tip: when you access a professional organization’s website, type “scholarship” in the search box for that website to find any pages that might have scholarship information.

Here are six websites to get you started on your search for professional organizations:

1. The Internet Public Library, an informational website compiled by librarians and students of information science, lists links to professional organizations
2. Weddle’s Association Directory
3. Yahoo Directory of Professional Organizations
4. FinAid.org has a list of scholarship databases and individual scholarship awards linked to specific majors or courses of study.
5. American Society for Association Executives & The Center for Association Leadership
6. The University of Waterloo in Canada has compiled a database of professional associations and scholarly societies that can be searched by subject.