Every person who is attending college or thinking about it or who has children who are or will be attending college should make every effort to keep the amount of student loans they take out as low as possible. This is easier said than done these days because the costs of higher education keep going up, and thus the amount of student loans people take out will continue to increase. The law has recently been changed such that federal student loans will no longer be made through student loan companies but will all be Direct Loans. These are loans that are made directly from the federal government. Federal student loans are certainly the best kind of student loans to take out. Private student loans will still be made by the traditional student loan companies. Suffice it to say that private student loans can get people into serious financial difficulty.

As for winning college merit scholarships, there are thousands of them available every year. They range from small local scholarships to large national competitions. To be successful in the college merit scholarship game takes time and effort, but the payoffs can be huge. In order to go after college merit scholarship money, there are certain things that a person should know. To get a good handle on this, it is recommended that people read the book “How To Go To College Almost For Free” by Ben Kaplan. This is the best resource I have found and it is indispensible for anyone who is serious about winning scholarship funds. Kaplan won over $90,000 in scholarships and completely paid for his four years at Harvard with them.

A couple of tips for your college merit scholarship efforts will be discussed in this paragraph. First of all, start your efforts early, even during the first year or two of high school. Doing so can help you plan the extracurricular activities you will need to make yourself stand out for the scholarship decision makers. You will also start going down the learning curve in filling out scholarship applications. Kaplan says that if you have done the work to complete two scholarship applications, you have done 60% of the work to do ten applications. Start your quest by applying for local scholarships first. In the first place there is less competition for these and they are easier to win, and secondly this will help you get down the learning curve as discussed above. One last bit of advice. You will certainly be required to write a number of essays with your applications. To make yourself stand out in the minds of judges, tell personal stories about yourself and what you have experienced. An interesting personal story that no one else can tell is more likely to be remembered by a college merit scholarship judge.