Gen Tanabe - The Ultimate Scholarship Book 2016: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships, Grants and Prizes

Until you get your results. No matter what website you use, there will be an unusually large number of scholarships that aren't good matches. After reading the eligibility requirements, you will discover that only a small handful are worth your time to apply. You've just discovered the first major weakness of every scholarship website: your life (background, experiences, goals, talents, awards, interests and accomplishments) cannot be defined or summarized by a computer-generated questionnaire. Your Life is MORE Than a 30-Question Profile The simple truth is that no computer can match you to scholarships as well as you can. You are a complex individual with a variety of passions, interests and goals.

Nothingperson or machineknows you better than you know yourself. And think about that profile form. That's the only information the computer has about you. But what if you don't know all the answers? Are you really set on becoming an orthopedic surgeon, or did that just sound cool? Even worse, you are limited by the choices provided on that profile questionnaire. Imagine that you wrote a poem that was published in your town's community newspaper. Should you select poet as a future career? Will that trigger a great poetry scholarship? Or maybe under hobbies, you should select writing and journalism? Of course, that might trigger a flood of journalism scholarships that wouldn't apply to you.

Or maybe, even though your school doesn't have a poetry club, you should still tell the computer that you are a member of one in order to trick it into showing you a sweet poetry award? Do you see where we're going? The very fact that you need to give the computer information about yourself while only using the choices the computer provides, without any clue about how those answers will affect your results, almost guarantees that you are going to miss out on some good scholarships. How do you know that because you answered a single question in the way that you did, that you are not missing out on some fantastic scholarship opportunities? The answer is, you don't. About Your Authors What makes us qualified to write The Ultimate Scholarship Book? Primarily it's because at one time we were exactly where you are now. We needed money to pay for college, and scholarships turned out to be our only answer. Not only did we do pretty well (winning more than $100,000 in free cash for college) but since then, we've continued to help thousands of students do the same. Here's our story: Kelly grew up in Los Angeles and when she got accepted to Harvard (which costs about $45,000 per year!), her family just didn't have the money to pay for it.

Gen grew up in Hawaii and faced a similar financial crunch when he got into Harvard. In fact, his father even tried to bribe him to attend his state university by offering him a new car if he would give up his idea of attending the ivy-league college. Even considering the cost of a brand new car, it would have been cheaper for Gen's family to make car payments than pay Harvard tuition! Since we both had our hearts set on attending a very expensive college that our families could not afford, we had little choice but to become fanatics about applying for scholarships. While we made a lot of beginner mistakes and it was by no means a quick or easy process, we were ultimately successful in winning more than $100,000 in scholarships. It was only because of this money that we were able to attend Harvard and were both able to graduate from college debt free. As you may have guessed by now, we met while at college.

We were actually next door neighbors in the dorm, and we were married a few years after we graduated from Harvard. Knowing first-hand how hard it can be for families to pay for college, we decided to share what we had learned as a result of our own pursuits to find funds for tuition. Our first books were about how to win scholarships and get financial aid. In fact, you can find 1001 Ways to Pay for College and How to Write a Winning Scholarship Essay in bookstores. But despite the success of these books, we found that whenever we spoke to groups of students or parents, the number one question they asked was, Do you know of scholarships for such-and-such a student? At the same time, we were also noticing a growing dissatisfaction from students who only relied on websites for scholarship information. This was somewhat of a mystery to us since we knew of thousands of great scholarships that were available.

Why weren't these awards being found? Why wasn't every student applying for these scholarships? All of this led to our decision to build our own database of scholarships and publish the results in The Ultimate Scholarship Book. We have a team of researchers who help us investigate scholarships, verify awards and ensure that the scholarships that make it into the book are the best and most up-to-date possible. So that's our story and why we feel so passionate about what we write in this book. It's not just a collection of words on paper; it's really the collective experience and intelligence of our own quest for scholarships along with thousands of hours of research by our scholarship staff. How This Book Overcomes the Disadvantages of Websites