By far, private scholarships offer college students the largest source of free money for education because there are literally hundreds of THOUSANDS of programs out there! (obviously too many to list here).

Corporations, associations, unions, foundations, religious, civic, and fraternal organizations all award scholarships to a variety of students for a multitude of different reasons. Whether you're a talented student with a 3.7 GPA, economically disadvantaged, athletic, artistic, scientifically or musically inclined … or just *left-handed* … chances are there is a scholarship program out there with your name on it!

Finding out about all the different private scholarships you may be eligible for can be a long and exhausting process. Luckily, there are a handful of great online resources that can help you with your search. These are:

Fast Web
www.fastweb.org

Scholarship America
www.scholarshipamerica.org/

The College Board's Scholarship Search
http://apps.collegeboard.com/cbsearch_ss/welcome.jsp

Scholarship Resource Network Express
www.srnexpress.com/index.cfm

The Princeton Review
www.princetonreview.com/college/finance/scholar

Next Student
www.nextstudent.com/scholarship_search/scholarship_search.asp

Broke Scholar
www.brokescholar.com/

Scholarships.com LLC
www.scholarships.com/

Caution: Be careful of private scholarship search services that charge a fee to locate scholarships for you (especially if they claim to guarantee to find you a scholarship if paid a certain amount of money). Remember, there is really no reason you should have to pay someone for public information you can otherwise find for free.