The Basics of Scholarships

Scholarships are a form of aid to help you pay your undergraduate tuition. Unlike loans, they do not have to be repaid. Generally, scholarships are reserved for students with special qualifications, such as academic, athletic, or artistic talent. Depending on your particular skills, you may find that you qualify for a variety of scholarships.

Scholarships are also available for students who are interested in particular fields of study, who are members of underrepresented groups, who live in certain areas of the country, or who demonstrate financial need. Scholarships for graduate students are known as fellowships.

Scholarships that sound too good to be true usually are. Learn how to recognize and protect yourself from the most common scholarship scams. The most important tip: If you have to pay money to get money, it is probably a scam.

Students who are awarded scholarships often need additional financial assistance. See The Basics of Loans section above for information on student and parent loans.

Many thousands of scholarships, in hundreds of fields, are awarded each year.

The FastWEB database (http://www.fastweb.com) is one place to begin your search. FastWEB is the Internet's first, largest, and fastest free scholarship search service. You can even submit a preliminary application to some of the scholarships listed on fastWEB directly through FastWEB's E-Scholarships program. FastWEB has awards from more than 10,000 sources, making it much larger than the other databases. It also has the tightest match criteria, meaning that students will not be shown awards for which they do not qualify. FastWEB's database is updated daily.

You may also want to search one of the other free scholarship databases. Do not waste your money on fee-based scholarship-matching services. You will not get any better information than you can get from the free services available on the Web. You'll notice a significant amount of overlap among the databases - they all use similar methods to compile their listings - but each database includes a few awards not listed in other databases.

There are also many competitions in the various arts disciplines that provide scholarships to the winners. See the section on competitions in Chapter 3 for more information.

Listed below are some basic resources for finding scholarships in the arts. Some of the scholarships listed are for individuals with disabilities only. For additional resources, please see the section on competitions and contests in Chapter 3 as well as the general resources listed in Resources for Finding Financial Aid and Scholarships below.

The Media Access Office
Los Angeles, CA

Telephone: (818) 752-1196
TTY: (818) 509-5614

The Media Access Office offers the following scholarships: the Christopher Reeve Acting Scholarship for an actor or actress 18 or older who has a disability, the Saban Young Actor Scholarship for an actor or actress under 18 who has a disability, the Norman Lear Scholarship for a stand-up comedian with a disability, and the Loreen Arbus Scholarship for a California State University at Northridge student filmmaker with a disability.

National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts
800 Brickell Avenue, Suite 500
Miami, FL 33131

Telephone: (305) 377-1147 or 1-800-970-ARTS
Fax: (305) 377-1149
Web site: http://www.nfaa.org
E-mail: nfaa@nfaa.org

The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts was founded in 1981 as a nonprofit arts organization. Its mission is to identify emerging artists and assist them at critical junctures in their educational and professional development. The organization also attempts to raise appreciation for, and support of, the arts in the United States. It provides information on grants, scholarships, and fellowships as well as other professional development information and assistance.