How do scholarships work?

So I'm in my first year of college and we're pretty much realizing that just paying out of pocket isn't going to work lol. It's pretty much time for me to either get some student loans or try to find some scholarship money for me. However, seeing as I had no plans to go to college while I was in High School, I never talked to my counselor about scholarships, so I'm completely clueless.

How do scholarships work, basically? Can I get an unlimited number of scholarships? Does the money go to me or my college? I need a new laptop for school really badly, so I was hoping I could work out some way to help pay for it with leftover scholarship money. Where can I go to find out information about scholarships? A Google search turned up mostly sites wanting to sell my info or charge me money to look at scholarships :/

Any help is appreciated

 

We don't have scholarships here in England, but I know you have to have very good grades to get one.

 

Isn't school considerably less expensive over there? I'm probably going to be paying upwards of $20,000 USD per year once I'm done at community college. We're a relatively low income family, roughly $60,000 per year. There's pretty much no way we can afford to have a third of that disappear :/

I'm currently on my way to getting a 4.0 GPA for this semester. I'm hoping to maintain it all 4 semesters at the community college so I can HOPEFULLY get a full scholarship.

 

Bright Future pays for my classes, look into it and see if it's available where you live.

 

To gain a scholarship you need to have a great attitude, dedication towards your work and high marks to be able to be considered and accepted. I have one at the moment, for all of my Engineering to be paid for in Sydney, Australia.

 

Well I mean, I know basically the general idea behind them. Good grades, dedication, etc.

What I really need to know is in the OP. The thing that concerns me the most is whether the money goes to me or my college. Since I need a new laptop for college, I need to prepare ahead of time to either buy one out of pocket or anticipate using my scholarship money for it.

 

I think it depends on where you are getting the scholarship from. One of my classmates got sent to England by our college to study there. She only had 1 year left, which she finished in England, our college paid for her tuition and that was it, she had to pay for everything else.

 

Actually I got money back from my bright future scholarship. It was about $600 the first semester. I'm not sure about next semester but my classes cost around $1,300 so I'll update you if I get the $1,300.

 

Well since noone has really posted any information that benefits you, i Will. Scholarship commitees base their decisions on several things. I would say it is based on financial need, Character of the person, If he is involved in the community, etc etc. Scholarship's are difficult to get. The easiest scholarships to get are the ones that the university offers, compared to the ones that people donate too (The scholarship will be named like "The John wilkins scholarship.) This is becuase there are far many fewer of these handed out. I can offer you several alternatives to getting money for school. The most effective way is by using "fafsa." This is a goverment program that gives you "pell grants" to help pay for school. A pell grant is money that does not need to be paid back. There are many tutorials on how to use fafsa, but basically it involves you using your tax returns as a basis on how much $ you will receive. To find scholarships that the college offers, generally it will be located under the "financial aid" tab. I would also advise meeting with a financial adviser at the campus you plan on attending, as they can give you great information about what you may qualify for. There is also a thing called "work study." This allows you to work on campus for the school, and they work around your school schedule. This will give you some extra cash.