College Confusion: The Difficulty of Finding Scholarships

As graduation approaches, seniors and early graduate juniors alike begin to plan their futures outside of high school. Although not everybody has plans to attend college after high school, those who intend on going to college will need to face the financial challenges that come with wanting to get a higher education.

There are various websites available online, but which website or sources are the best to use? An interview with, senior, Naliyah Moore, mentions how “it’s difficult finding them on my own because you don’t really know what’s a scam or not.” With the abundance of websites online, students struggle to find what is a trustworthy and legit site to find scholarships.

In another interview, senior Brooke Piekema, says, a good way to find scholarships is to look up associations or organizations students are already a part of. She mentions how she’s found scholarships in “Iowa Corn Growers Association,” an organization she’s actively involved with. Piekema, also brings up, outside of the organizations she is in, “it took me a while to find scholarships and to know how credible they are.” This further emphasizes the difficulty of finding a scholarship as a senior.

Senior, Dane Butler, also says how it is “hard to look for scholarships and I don’t even know what to do.” This goes to show that not all seniors know where to look for scholarships and without guidance, it makes the experience more difficult. 

While there are many struggles going around trying to find scholarships, it is also worth noting that there are various scholarships on the counselor connections canvas page. Both Moore and Piekema stress the importance of checking the counselor connection page and their emails so all students are aware of incoming scholarships the counselors are sending out. 

The counselor connection canvas page sends out various announcements with scholarships linked to the page. They also put the order in which the scholarships are due by date, making finding scholarships easy and accessible. The canvas page is relatively easy to navigate and there are various scholarships varying in value.