Paying for college can be expensive...REALLY expensive. Fear not, help is there! Many students pay their way through college using someone else's money! No, it isn't by stealing, it's through scholarships!

A few things about scholarships

1. You don't have to pay them back; they're not student loans
2.  You can obtain scholarships by merit or by need.
3. Scholarships aren't going to show up out of nowhere, you have to go look for them!

How to get scholarships

You can get scholarships for almost anything. There are scholarships about:

Common Scholarship Topics

• Academic majors. If you are planning to pursue a specific field, you can apply for scholarships from companies or societies that want to help students succeed in the field
• Gender. Many societies and schools award scholarships to female students if are choosing to study in a field that is historically a male-dominated field
• Race/Ethnicity. As with gender, ethnic minorities who historically do not go to college are often offer scholarships to outstanding students

Specific Scholarship Topics

• events in history, such as the Holocaust
• books, such as the essay contest about books written by Ayn Rand

Where to look

Scholarship search engines. If you google "scholarships" you'll get a list of websites touting "free scholarships" searches. A few popular ones are:

• Fastweb
• Fundfinder (a collegeboard scholarship search)

Applying for scholarships

Most scholarship applications require at least one essay and some merit-based ones require teacher recommendations. Collegeboard's website features comprehensive articles on how to apply for scholarships as well as other tips on how to pay for your higher education