As I prepared to head off for college, I heard the same advice again and again, the most common being, “If you want scholarships, register on [insert name of scholarship website here].”

The number of students depending solely on sites such as fastweb.com to supplement the price of tuition is staggering. It’s easy to spend hours filling out forms, listing extracurricular activities, and writing essays, hit “submit,” and then never hear anything about any of the applications ever again.

So what’s a student to do? One option is to explore opportunities for local scholarships. Here are several tips to not only find them, but increase your chances of being selected to receive these awards.

1. Communicate to your teachers, guidance counselors, and any active community leaders that you have a relationship with, such as school board members or local politicians, that you are looking for financial assistance for college.  These are the kinds of people who tend to be on panels that make final decisions about who gets local scholarships. Making someone on the panel aware of your financial need is a great asset. 

2. In your applications, be very specific about volunteer hours and jobs, and how they explicitly involved or benefitted your community. Most local scholarships are awarded based largely on community involvement, and are seen as an investment in young people who show promise in continuing to be an active community member, so make sure your application reflects these qualities.

3. Personally contact country clubs, historical societies, PTAs (including those of schools you attended in past years like your elementary school), and other community organizations. Most of these institutions offer scholarships for graduating seniors and may even direct you towards more.  A phone call works well, however stopping in to the location can be a very good move as well. Contacting these organizations directly helps put a face, or at least a voice, to an application. 

4. Follow directions very carefully.  Some local scholarships have lengthy, detailed directions.  Because the application pool is smaller, your application is going to looked at that much closer.  Be sure that everything you write thoroughly and to the best of your ability meets the guidelines that are established.  Simply not reading the directions and handwriting an application that should be typed can automatically take you out of the running if it is seen as carelessness.