Institutional Scholarships

In my view, one of the least talked about categories of scholarships is the institutional scholarship. These are scholarships that are awarded by the college or university themselves or by an organization very closely related to an individual post-secondary school such as a greek organization or alumni group. I believe the reason these are among the least talked about forms of financial aid is because the people who are asking about scholarships (parents) are asking the wrong people (school counselors).


Every college or university has these types of scholarships. However, the ones at the University of Mississippi, for example, are going to be completely different than the ones Georgetown University in Washington DC has. You can’t expect a random counselor at your high school to know all about those anymore that you can expect him or her to know the best places to eat in South Bend, Indiana. Your counselor can speculate that South Bend has some fast food restaurants, there’s probably a Mexican place, a pizza joint, a sports bar with wings, but how is the counselor supposed to know the exact menu of all those restaurants? If you want to know what’s good to eat around Notre Dame, you need to talk to someone in South Bend. So it is with institutional scholarships.


The best place to start your search is with a college’s financial aid website. Many of these scholarships will be offered at admission as part of the financial aid package. These are recruiting tools for the colleges. If the college really wants you to come, they’ll offer you some money to peak your interest. More often than not, the application for these simply means completing the FAFSA and of course your admissions application. However, there is a whole world of other institutional scholarships and the mechanism for applying for them can vary greatly from one college to the next. This is why looking at the school’s financial aid website is so important.


These “other” scholarships might be offered by an individual department within the school, they could come from a certain club, or at the bequest of an individual alumni. Big schools might have hundreds of these and some of the scholarships might have very narrow scopes. The application might consist of a three-page essay that’s reviewed by a panel or it could be a simple phone interview with a single old lady. Simply put, these can go a lot of different ways.





If you’re really serious about finding scholarships, you have to look for them. There’s a chance some of these scholarships aren’t even on the college’s website. Keep your eyes peeled at orientation and after you start college for newspaper ads, flyers, and other venues around campus. Just because you’re already in college doesn’t mean you can’t find new scholarships. Some could be available exclusively for upperclassmen. This is a great way to reduce your financial aid burden and because these often require a little more homework, the competition can be lighter. You just have to decide how hungry you are for financial aid and hard you’re willing to work to track these down.