Financing College

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)

The best starting place for the financial aid process is The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the financial aid application form to apply for federal and state student grants, work-study, and loans for college. All students, regardless of income level, should complete the FAFSA.

For more information regarding financial aid, please visit http://www.hcpss.org/college-career-readiness/financial-aid/

Community and National Scholarships

Naviance also has several useful scholarship search engines at the bottom of the Colleges tab.

1. Scholarship List – provides a list of all the scholarships in the Naviance database. Scholarship information is updated as new applications become available typically beginning in the winter and spring. A vast majority of the scholarships are refunded each year so stop back if the information has not yet become available. Browse by Category, or click the blue Name, Deadline, Max Award, or different scholarship types to resort the scholarship list accordingly.

2. Scholarship Match – lists scholarships you are eligible to apply for based upon your demographic and testing data that’s already loaded into Naviance.

3. National Scholarship Search – links to a Sallie Mae search engine of nation-wide scholarships. Drop in some of demographic and testing information and it will populate results accordingly. A nice feature of this search engine is that you can bookmark scholarships you find and return to them later.

Students are encouraged to consider applying for the Community Foundation of HoCo awards as these are only available to Howard County students! Also, the Mike Chang Community Foundation’s Award, Palmer Book Fund, Changing Destinations Book Scholarship, Reed Scholarship, and Gottesmann Scholarship are only available to Hammond High students.