Senior Associate Director of Student Financial Aid Anissa Strickland spoke to Kent State students Friday about how to apply for scholarships as well as where to find them.  

Strickland said the financial aid office receives approximately 6,000 applications from students every year for the over 700 available scholarships. The financial aid office always gets enough applicants for scholarships, but Strickland is shocked there aren’t more.

“For a school of this size, I’m always surprised at how many applications we don’t get,” she said.  “With a school of around 40,000 students, you would think we would get close to 20,000 applications.”

Kent State has its own scholarship board available to all students. Students first must make a profile and answer basic questions about themselves, such as gender, ethnicity, and grade point average. After creating a profile, students can filter the scholarships seen and tailor it to them.

Strickland relates the work of finding and applying for scholarships as to having a part-time job.

“You have to put that much time and energy into this process in order to uncover these opportunities that may be available to you,” she said.

Strickland stressed to students the importance of checking the scholarship board often. She said there are over 180 scholarship administrators at Kent State’s eight campuses, and any of them can go in and add a scholarship at any time.

Senior communication studies major Abrianna Burton said she keeps up frequently with all the scholarship postings.

“I have a whole list on my computer of scholarships I want to apply for,” she said.

The Kent State scholarship website isn’t the only place to look for scholarships. Strickland recommends students use Fastweb.com as one of the many online scholarship search engines.

Fastweb.com has a database of over one million scholarships available to student across the globe. Many of the scholarships are available to everyone.

When applying for a scholarship through Kent State’s website, students are required to write a personal statement or an essay. Strickland said having an essay usually determines how serious a student is about the scholarship. Strickland said most of the time, a good or bad essay will outweigh a high or low GPA.

“Don’t think your GPA or grades aren’t high enough for a scholarship,” she said. “You might be surprised.” 

Contact Maggie Wachtel at [email protected].