Editorial Reviews
Review
—Honolulu Advertiser
“Advice on applying for scholarships from start to finish.”
—
“All students will profit from this highly detailed book.”
—David Miller, Director of College Counseling, Stevenson School
“This guide (has) … practical tips on where to find scholarships; how to write effective applications, resumes, and winning essays; and how to get glowing recommendations and ace scholarship interviews.”
—C.E. King, Iowa State University,
“A common sense approach to scholarship searches.
The Ultimate Scholarship Book gives a down to earth step by step method of finding, applying for and winning scholarships.”—Lynda McGee, College Counselor, Downtown Magnets High School, Los Angeles
“Upbeat tone and clear, practical advice.”
—
Review
—Honolulu Advertiser
“Advice on applying for scholarships from start to finish.”
—
“All students will profit from this highly detailed book.”
—David Miller, Director of College Counseling, Stevenson School
“This guide (has) … practical tips on where to find scholarships; how to write effective applications, resumes, and winning essays; and how to get glowing recommendations and ace scholarship interviews.”
—C.E. King, Iowa State University,
“A common sense approach to scholarship searches.
The Ultimate Scholarship Book gives a down to earth step by step method of finding, applying for and winning scholarships.”—Lynda McGee, College Counselor, Downtown Magnets High School, Los Angeles
“Upbeat tone and clear, practical advice.”
—
From the Back Cover
ACCESS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF FREE CASH FOR COLLEGE
The goal of The Ultimate Scholarship Book is simple: To help you find free money. Inside you’ll find the most easy-to-use index makes finding the right scholarships ridiculously quick. And it wouldn’t be the Ultimate book without insider strategies on how to win the scholarships you find!
• DISCOVER ONLY THE BEST SCHOLARSHIPS FOR YOU. No more wasting your time with scholarships that are only open to students at a single college or from a specific city. The Ultimate Scholarship Book lists awards that most students are eligible for—awards that are based on career and academic goals, public service, extracurricular activity, talent, athletics, religion, ethnicity and more.
• FIND MORE SCHOLARSHIPS THAN ON A WEBSITE. Think the Internet beats books? Think again! You’ll find more scholarships that are a match for you in The Ultimate Scholarship Book than you will ever find on a scholarship website. All awards are organized into easy-to-browse categories such as humanities, social science, science and the ever popular “general” category for awards that have almost no restrictions.
• UNCOVER SCHOLARSHIPS NOT BASED ON GRADES OR NEED. You don’t need a perfect GPA or financial need to win a scholarship. There are plenty of awards that have none of these requirements.
• LEARN HOW TO WIN SCHOLARSHIPS. Why apply to a scholarship that you won’t win? Learn rarely discussed strategies and insider tips to develop winning scholarship applications, essays and interview skills.
The Ultimate Scholarship Book is the best investment you can make in your future.
About the Author
Gen Tanabe won more than $100,000 in scholarships to graduate from Harvard debt-free. He is the award-winning co-author of 14 books including The Ultimate Scholarship Book, How to Write a Winning Scholarship Essay and 1001 Ways to Pay for College and has been an expert source for publications including The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report and USA Today.
Kelly Tanabe won more than $100,000 in scholarships to graduate from Harvard debt-free. She is the award-winning co-author of 14 books including The Ultimate Scholarship Book, How to Write a Winning Scholarship Essay and 1001 Ways to Pay for College and has been an expert source for publications including The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report and USA Today.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When we began looking for scholarships, we made what is perhaps the biggest mistake of the novice scholarship hunter―we started by looking as far away as possible. We were mesmerized by the big prizes of the large (and often well-publicized) national awards. We thought, “If I won just one of these national scholarship competitions, I’d be set and could end my search.” This turned out to be a big mistake and an even bigger time-waster. It seemed that everyone and his brother, sister and cousin were also applying to these competitions. The Coca-Cola scholarship competition, for example, receives more than 100,000 applications each year.
It turned out that the last place we looked for scholarships was our most lucrative source. Best of all, this place turned out to be in our own backyard!
What are backyard scholarships and where do you find them? Think about all the civic groups, clubs, businesses, churches and organizations in your community. Each of these is a potential source for scholarships. (If you are already in college, you have two communities: your hometown and the city in which you go to school.) Since these awards are usually only available to students in your community, the competition is a lot less fierce.
You may be thinking, “What good is a $500 Lions Club scholarship when my college costs 20 grand a year?” It’s true that local scholarships don’t award the huge prizes that some of the national competitions do. You already know that we won over $100,000 in scholarships. What we haven’t told you is that the majority of this money came from local scholarships! We literally won $500 here and $1,500 there. By the time we graduated from Harvard and added up all the awards, it turned out to be a huge amount. Plus, some of the local scholarships that we won were “renewable,” which meant that we received that money each year we were in college. So a $500 renewable scholarship was really worth $2,000 over four years.
If you still can’t get excited because these local awards seem small compared to the cost of tuition, try this exercise: Take the amount of the award and divide it by the time you invested in the application. For the $500 Lions Club award, let’s say that you spent one hour each night for three days to complete the application and write the essay. Take $500 and divide it by three hours. That works out to a little over $166 per hour. (Now imagine that the award was for $1,000 instead. That would make it $333 per hour!) Not bad by any measure. If you can find a job that pays you more than $166 an hour, then take it and forget applying to scholarships. If not, get back to applying for scholarships–even the little ones!
Let’s get specific and look at all of the places in your backyard to find scholarships.
Christopher Carey –
The Ultimate Scholarship Book 2024 is a very well-written source of information. It is not a hastily, haphazardly assembled chaotic list of outdated phone numbers. It is obvious that the Tanabe husband and wife team poured lots of their time and heart into this work to make it one of the most comprehensive wellsprings of intelligence you will ever read. Their combined experiences with applying for scholarships shines through as they convey so much knowledge to you that you will feel like an expert upon completion of this book. There is so much material on the process of applying for scholarships that you will easily develop confidence in the process. Did you know that a resume may be required for some scholarships? They do and they explain how to complete resumes as well as essays. The list of scholarships is exhaustive and logically sorted by field, state of residence and other criteria. There is a well thought out index to help you effortlessly find the scholarship that you are looking for. They make it clear that it will take work and time and you may be up against a lot of competition. They won’t give you the illusion that it will be a cakewalk but your efforts will payoff. I found the interview questions very insightful. How can a book that is so easy and fun to read contain so much information? Kudos to Gen and Kelly Tanabe, well done!
DVann –
I have bought these for several years for people trying to get money for school.
GM –
If you are trying to get financial aid, I would recommend this buy.
MJC –
For someone who is easily overwhelmed, this is a great resource. The categories are dummy proof which is what we needed. Our eldest says they will continue to use this their entire school year and into college.
LR –
I’ve heard from other moms that have gone before me that this specific book is a scholarship game changer. So far we feel it has given us a helpful roadmap to follow
Candise –
If you have a student who is preparing for college this is a must have book!
Kindle Customer –
Helping two kids apply for scholarships that don’t waste their time on useless websites. This was wonderful with all the info to help them in their search for financial help in school.
Jonie Gibson –
I ordered this for my son who is a high school senior. I asked him how the book was, ( was it helpful, was it as list of scholarships, was it worth the money). He said, “it’s kinda confusing and I don’t quite understand it”. So, I read it, to see if I could help him better understand it. This book is just a how to get scholarships guide. It tells you where to look, how to look, and what to look for. It goes on to explain what a scholarships is and why they are given. It also explains how to choose the scholarships you are best suited for. Over all this book us very informative. However, my personal opinion, is this book is not worth the price I paid for it.
Amazon Customer –
Found that a number of them are over due dates of 2023
Nicole –
I purchased this book for my child who is heading to college in the fall. The book was filled with every type of scholarship imaginable and suitable for any student. There was also a good number of grants also available. My son found and applied for 6 scholarships in the first few days we had the book. In this day and age with all the changes being made to the FASFA and the rising cost of college tuition, this boom is a must have for any student determined to offset the cost of higher education.