From The Mailbag: Scholarships for Military

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I love it when work and life intersect.  And with four teenagers, the subject of college money is popular in my house.  (Or unpopular, depending on your perspective.)  Thankfully, I've discovered a great new tool for military family members who are looking for scholarships.

Dear Kate:

My husband is on active duty and our daughter is a high school junior.  I'm worried about how we will pay for college.  I hear that there are many scholarships for military kids, but I have no idea where to find them.

DL

I literally just found this resource yesterday, and I spent the day sifting through it.  My poor daughter just got about 20 more scholarship applications to fill out.  I'm not very popular right now.

Dear DL,

You are in luck.  I've been writing about military scholarship for a long time, and I've not previously found any single source that lists most of the unique little scholarships for military-related folks.  However, just yesterday I discovered that the Military Scholars website has added a search feature, and it's really good.  It includes every scholarship that I know of, plus quite a few more that I've not previously seen.  There are scholarships for active duty, veterans, spouses, children, and even a few grand-children!

The Military Scholars website, sponsored by the Fisher House Foundation, is also the starting point for the Scholarships for Military Children program, sponsored by the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA.)

I encourage you to see what this search function turns up for you.  It's not super-fast, and I did spend a lot of time asking my husband questions such as, "Did that job at such and such count as surface forces?" to figure out which scholarships applied to our situation.  But hey, even one small scholarship is worth a couple of hours effort.

Good luck on your hunt for scholarship money.  I know how stressful and overwhelming the college process is.  Hang in there!

Kate

I am often amazed at how many scholarships there are for military kids.  Yes, the competition is sometimes tough.  I have sat on a couple of scholarship committees and there are generally many qualified applicants, but not always.  In one case, we had fewer applicants that scholarships to give out.  Definitely apply - it is time worth spending.

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