I never knew how hard it would be to get scholarship money for college until I actually started looking for it. After days of searching for what I thought would be free scholarship money, I discovered that over half of the scholarship sites I visited required personal information. If they didn’t ask right away, they sent me through a dozen pages of sponsor advertisements until finally getting me to a form that asked me for a four page description on how I wanted to change the world.

Although the internet made it easy for me to search for undergraduate college scholarships, it also made it easy for millions of other students hunting for a shot at free cash. So even after finding sites that didn’t ask me for my background information, I still competed with thousands other people. One week after I submitted online applications I checked my e-mail account, for what I thought would be updates regarding the status of my completed applications, only to find massive amounts of SPAM from companies I hadn’t even heard of before.

It’s hard enough writing a paper for one scholarship on top of trying to complete course work for five classes, let alone working two part time jobs where I can not futz around on a computer all day begging Google for tips on how to get scholarships from sites that don’t invade my privacy. I turned to my college advisor for advice. I visited the department for scholarship information and found two scholarships available for the current semester. So they expected me to compete with over twelve hundred students for a scholarship that required two recommendation letters, an unofficial transcript, a two page paper and the three page application itself? I was desperate.

After spending days gathering and completing all of the required materials I went to the office to apply. It was there I found out that I needed five copies of each paper I had with me so that every member of the board could review my application. So after spending money on a new ink cartridge, ream of paper and stressing out about deadlines, I got to rest. Two months later I received an electronic notification telling me that some girl named Britney something was receiving over three thousand dollars and that I should try again next semester.

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