The Scholarship Scouting Report: An Insider's Guide to America's Best Scholarships

From Publishers Weekly
Guides to finding and applying for scholarships are plentiful, so ambitious high-schoolers might as well get one penned by someone who managed to pick up enough award money to put himself through Harvard. Kaplan wrote How To Go To College Almost For Free (he garnered "nearly $90,000 in scholarship winnings," he notes proudly), and now he moves on to examine the most attractive scholarships nationwide. Kaplan winnows them down to those available to the largest pool of people (e.g. scholarships not based on region, race or financial need), and then picks the most lucrative of the bunch. The result is an odd collection of benefactors, from America's Junior Miss to the Ayn Rand Institute, but the book is jammed with useful information for the college-bound. In addition to the necessary procedural details, Kaplan adds anecdotes, tips and past entries or essays that caught judges' eyes. The lively, graphics-filled format is pretty goofy, but this is a valuable resource for scholarship-hungry kids looking for the inside scoop. B&w illus. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Kaplan's first book, How to Go to College Almost for Free (2001), was chockablock with general information for college-bound teens hunting for scholarship money, but his latest book really gets down to specifics. It's a collection of more than 100 carefully selected awards with the usual information on entry requirements and application procedures but also with great insider's advice on judging criteria, excerpts from winning scholarship entries, and summaries of the actual experiences of award winners. In choosing awards, Kaplan has steered clear of need-based scholarships and focused on awards that can be used anywhere, and he has made an obvious effort to crisscross age levels: the Talbot's Scholarship, for example, is for adult women bound for college; the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Program is open to students as young as 14. It's all about mindset, Kaplan says in his cheery, enthusiastic text, and he provides lots of advice, with even more available on his interactive Web site. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


The Boston Globe
"What Dr. Ruth does for the human libido, Ben aims to do for the tuition subsidy."


Heritage Newspapers
"One of the hottest self-help authors on the market today."


Book Description
The first in-depth guide to the nation's best, most accessible scholarship opportunities!

A true insider in the world of tuition financing, Ben Kaplan has helped tens of thousands of students attend colleges and universities they never thought they'd be able to afford. Now he takes his expertise one step further in this behind-the-scenes tour of America's top scholarship programs. Based on hundreds of exhaustive interviews with scholarship judges, administrators, and past winners, this easy-to-use scouting report highlights the essential scholarships you must know about and helps you better address each scholarship's "hidden" judging criteria in your application. If you think the college of your dreams is out of your financial reach-or that your scholarship search has to be an overwhelming and frustrating process-think again: Ben Kaplan wrote the guide that will help you focus your search, position your scholarship candidacy, and ultimately afford the college of your choice. Special Note: As a valued reader of this book, you also receive access to the Coach's Locker Room at Ben Kaplan's ScholarshipCoach.com website. The Coach's Locker Room provides a wealth of bonus material, updates to information contained in The Scholarship Scouting Report, question and answer postings, and other helpful resources.


About the Author
Ben Kaplan won more than two dozen scholarships -- amassing nearly $90,000 in unrestricted college cash for use at any school.In 1999, he graduated from Harvard debt-free, with virtually the entire cost of his education covered by his scholarship winnings.In addition to writing The Scholarship Scouting Report, Kaplan is the author of How to Go to College Almost for Free and Scholarship Seeker’s Toolbox -- the three books forming an essential paying-for-college trilogy for students of all ages.Kaplan has also written numerous articles on winning scholarships, including columns for The New York Times and U.S. News & World Report, that have been syndicated in publications nationwide.He has been featured on hundreds of television and radio programs, including appearances on Oprah, NBC, CBS, and National Public Radio.Known internationally as "The Scholarship Coach," Kaplan has served as the resident scholarship adviser at some of the Internet’s most popular scholarship search websites, and is the founder of ScholarshipCoach.com, the leading online scholarship advice portal.Kaplan currently resides in Portland, Oregon, and can be contacted at Ben@ScholarshipCoach.com via e-mail.


Excerpted from The Scholarship Scouting Report: An Insider's Guide to America's Best Scholarships by Ben Kaplan. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
If you think you know what type of person wins college scholarships, think again. Did you realize that someone with a GPA barely high enough to graduate high school ended up winning tens of thousands of dollars in college cash? Did you know that even an individual serving a prison sentence won an extremely competitive scholarship essay contest? Would you expect that a student diagnosed with dyslexia -- someone who reads at the 18th percentile level -- could claim one of the nation's most prestigious scholarships and be well on her way to a Ph.D. in astrophysics? All of these people are real scholarship winners. All of them won scholarships profiled in this book. Quite simply, THE SCHOLARSHIP SCOUTING REPORT is designed to assist any student in search of scholarship money for higher education. The scholarship programs included in this book cover a full spectrum of scholarship awards -- including scholarships for high school and college students, graduate students, nontraditional students, and even kids under 14. Whether you're a 6th grader just starting to dream about college, a high school senior in the midst of college applications, an undergraduate junior struggling with paying current tuition bills and raising funds for future grad school costs, or perhaps a 62-year-old grandma heading back to school (you go, girl!), this book will prove useful to you. The programs described in these pages provide college cash for use at community colleges, trade and technical schools, public and private four-year colleges and universities, and graduate institutions. None of the awards are restricted for use at a particular school -- thereby enabling school choice. Students with all sorts of backgrounds, achievements, and interests will find scholarships in this book that are appropriate for them. Because parents can play hugely important roles in the scholarship game -- as researchers, sounding boards, organizers, motivators, and proofreaders, for example -- the research collected in this volume will prove to be an invaluable parental guide. Likewise, guidance counselors will find each scouting report to be a very useful reference tool for instructing students on how to improve drafts of their scholarship application submissions. If you're looking for a gripping tale of suspense and drama, try John Grisham. But if you want to get other people to help pay for your tuition, then you've come to the right place.


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Guides to finding and applying for scholarships are plentiful, so ambitious high-schoolers might as well get one penned by someone who managed to pick up enough award money to put himself through Harvard. Kaplan wrote How To Go To College Almost For Free (he garnered "nearly $90,000 in scholarship winnings," he notes proudly), and now he moves on to examine the most attractive scholarships nationwide. Kaplan winnows them down to those available to the largest pool of people (e.g. scholarships not based on region, race or financial need), and then picks the most lucrative of the bunch. The result is an odd collection of benefactors, from America's Junior Miss to the Ayn Rand Institute, but the book is jammed with useful information for the college-bound. In addition to the necessary procedural details, Kaplan adds anecdotes, tips and past entries or essays that caught judges' eyes. The lively, graphics-filled format is pretty goofy, but this is a valuable resource for scholarship-hungry kids looking for the inside scoop. B&w illus. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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