You have applied to a few colleges but there is only one that matters. You know you should not expect a response so soon after submitting your application. A couple weeks after submitting your application, you find a letter in the mail from your top choice college. You wait until you are inside and in your kitchen. You slowly start to open the letter. It is in a small envelope which makes you even more nervous. Then, you tear open the seal and pull out the papers. The first word your eyes land on is “Congratulations!” You are ecstatic and the only thing that is on your mind is that you got into your top choice college. You think you have nothing to worry about. But you do: how to pay for your expensive education.

This is a situation that seniors commonly find themselves in. They find out that they have been accepted into their dream school and the very last thing they are thinking about is how much it costs and how they are going to afford it.

I am currently in this situation. I have been accepted into my first choice school which is a state school. Most state schools are public schools which means their tuition might not be as high as private colleges, but that also means that they are less generous with their money.

From my experience, private schools that have accepted me, offered to pay about half of my tuition per year. But the public school that is my top choice, has not told me how much money they will be awarding me with. Most schools will let you know how much money they are willing to give you with or after your acceptance decision. Public schools will not always give you as much money as a private institute.

Schools offer scholarships within their specific colleges or alumni scholarships. These  scholarships are very specific with their requirements and are not always offered to incoming freshmen.

That is when you turn to websites and go talk to your counselor. I went to my counselor and he told me about a website that offers scholarships to CPS students, and only CPS students. The website is www.cps.academicworks.com. Your login information is the same as for your CPS email.

This website has scholarships that are only available to CPS students. If you are searching for a specific type of scholarship, you can search for it or go through the filters.

Another great website to find scholarships is Fastweb. It is easy to use and helps you stay organized. This website helps you find scholarships by having you fill out a registration form and a questionnaire. With this, the website matches you to certain scholarships. Then, for each scholarship there is a tab that has a drop down menu with options like “will apply,” “might apply,” “already applied,” “will apply,” and “not eligible.” This helps you organize your scholarships and moves them to different tabs so you are not constantly searching for the ones you want. The website also notifies you when they find new scholarship matches for you.

Through this website, I found a lot of scholarships within my top choice college. A lot of colleges offer scholarships within their school as well as scholarships outside of the school. Fastweb also gives information on jobs and financial aid and other colleges.

Many colleges offer good scholarship websites that are reliable on their financial aid/scholarship page on the school’s website. You can use those to find scholarships or you can just search on Google, but you have to be careful because not all websites are reliable, some sites are scams.

Typically, a scholarship scam may require an application fee or any fees in general, paying a disbursement or redemption fee before receiving said scholarship, request for personal information that goes beyond your home address and phone number, an address that belongs to a box or residential address, and many more. FinAid, a website that has information about paying for college, gives a whole list of ways to spot scams. FinAid is also a good source for help with loans, scholarships, and financial aid in general.

US News says that the top nine ways to spot a scholarship scam are: application fees, no phone number for the scholarship provider, open to everyone, no proof of past winners, fake nonprofit/federal status, requests for personal financial information, claims that they will do all the work for you, winning a scholarship you did not apply for, and paying to search for scholarships. If you do happen to be a victim of a scam, you can protect others from it by reporting it to the Federal Trade Commission on www.ftc.gov or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP.

You can also get creative with raising money to help pay for college. Some students or their families create GoFundMe pages and reach out to the public to see if they will be willing to help out and donate.

With all these things on my mind, I started thinking about why my parents did not start a college fund for me. I talked to my mom about it and she said that there are restrictions on college funds that banks place. Some of the ones that my mom mentioned are restrictions on what colleges you can apply to in order to be able to use the money, taxes, and when the economy crashed, all that money could have been lost. My smart response to her was “Who said it had to be kept in a bank?”

I decided to look into it some more. Wells Fargo Bank offers a 529 plan that is “state-sponsored programs, usually managed by a financial services firm. Tax advantages and a surprising degree of flexibility are just two of the benefits that families derive from 529 plans.”

From my understanding of the information Wells Fargo provided on their website about this (https://www.wellsfargo.com/investing/education/529/), you would not pay taxes and the money in this fund can be used for any “eligible accredited post-secondary institutions nationwide, including undergrad, graduate, post-grad, and even vocational, or trade schools.” What makes a school eligible? They do not say.

It is hard deciding what college to attend, especially when your favorite is not as generous with their money. I think, in the end, you go where you want to go and you go to the school that will benefit you and your future the most.