Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Scholarship Book 2010: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships, Grants and Prizes (Ultimate Scholarship Book: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships,)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book to look for scholarships for my high school child who will be going to college. Well, come to realize after reading through and scanning all the scholarships offered, only a small percentage are for high school students trying to raise money for college. Out of the 2043 scholarships they offer in this book by categories such as: General, Humanities/Arts, Social Sciences, Sciences, State of Residence, Membership, Ethnicity and Disability, I could only find 73 scholarships that she "might" be eligible for. They are almost all for small amounts- $1,000 or less also. It is a lot of work, for very little reward. There are less than 5 scholarships that are over $10,000 and the competition is fierce. A very large majority of the scholarships offered in this book are for college students, grad students, and adult students. I liked the book because it gives me a good "starting point", but I would say look for something geared more toward high school if that's what you need.

One of the biggest complaints about scholarship books is that you won't find enough scholarships. It is true that not every scholarship in this book will be applicable to you, but there are several reasons why I think this is the best of the bunch. First, you WILL find many, many scholarships that fit you. It will take some time, but it's definitely worth the effort and the way that this book is organized makes it as easy as it could be. Second, what this book has that others don't is information on what to do once you find the scholarships--tips on how to win the awards. I highly recommend this book to any student who is looking for money to pay for school.

This book is fantastic. The sheer amount of information and number of scholarships is a great tool to have at your fingertips. Not to mention that, in my opinion, it's grouped together well so that you can find scholarships that apply to you without having to work too hard. I most definitely recommend this to anyone who is going to attend college or helping someone attend college. It's not free like scholarship websites, but it does have tons more in it than those sites ever could.

My only problem comes from downright wrong information. I'm aware that fact checking a book like this would be almost impossible and that the writers probably rely on information given to them. But, I feel it has to be said. When checking out some of the sites I was eligible for, I noticed that the deadline dates in the books were sometimes wrong. For example, it stated that the deadline for a certain scholarship was March 31st, but when I went to the website, it was actually on March 15. Not a huge mistake, but one that could cost someone some college money. Another problem is the websites themselves. Some are so difficult to find the actual scholarship that I found myself using Google to find them instead of the provided website. Another website was nonexistent. Also, more than one of the scholarships listed actually hadn't existed for a couple of years (this one in particular had been defunct since 2007).

All-in-all, this book is incredible. It does have its flaws, but they are nowhere near bad enough to prevent this book from being amazing. Buy it! You won't regret it.

I love this book. The information is up to date and complete and you get everything you need in one place to apply for scholarships. What I don't like about some of the other scholarship books is that they have scholarships that are only applicable if you attend a specific college. This book doesn't waste space on those types of limiting scholarships. Instead it has scholarships that are open no matter which college you attend. I think it's probably the best $20 you can spend to find scholarships you can win!

As one reviewer pointed out, the title of the this book is misleading - very little info on sending your high school kid to college.

But worse yet, most of the 5-star reviews are fake, written by the authors. Click through to 'see all my reviews,' and each 'reviewer' wrote about 5 reviews, all 5 stars, and each for books written by Gen and/or Kelly Tanabe.

Shameful. Avoid this book.

Note - I posted this on Jan 16, 2011, so I'm sure the authors will respond to this outing by attempting to tone down their fake 5-star reviews.

This book is definitely thick! I had originally stumbled upon this book when I was researching different scholarships online and had exhausted all my resources with the search engines that were available. There is definitely a lot to go through in this book. I would highly recommend at least scanning through all of them. Each scholarship listed is very well organized, so it's easy to to so. You can easily scan for the purpose of the scholarship or who the target students are.

While I still have about a fourth of the book more to scan through, I would say there is a good variety. There are some scholarships that target high school level, few that target junior high, and some for general and specific graduate students. If you are a second or third year college undergraduate, I would say more of the scholarships are targeted for that level. Upon purchasing this book I would also highly recommend you use their website updates for their scholarships as a supplement. Each scholarship is given a code in the book that you can enter online and you can click straight from there to the scholarship website.

Overall, I would say it was a good buy. Now let's just hope I can get some of these scholarships!

This guide has hundreds of scholarahip opportunities as well as ideas and suggestions for finding some on your own.

This compilation of scholarships is more than just that. It provides teachings in the beginning on where one could seek out scholarships other than in the book. It also teaches you how to write a great scholarship essay. Additionally it gives other advise about what you should include in a scholarship entry. All of this is very beneficial and adds to the book's usefullness.

As for the scholarship compilation, it is very long. It took me a full day to read through them all. In all, I found about 36 scholarships that could apply to me. Let me tell you about myself; I am a middle class, white female pursuing a degree in pharmacy (I am a freshman).

Let me break down the sections of the book for you a little and how they applied to me personally...

General:
Most of this is geared towards individuals who are decendants of military personnel, were in JROTC or are in the ROTC.
There were still some scholarships that were for the general public (scholarship types: research, essay, random drawing, and the arts). For me, most of my scholarships came out of this section, second part.

Humanities/Arts:
Pretty self-explanatory as to what it entails, though I did not look at any of these since I am a pharmacy major.

Sciences:
I was somewhat disappointed at the science compilation. A LOT of the scholarships in this section were for engineering or dental hygenist. Don't get me wrong, there were many other scholarships for other majors. However, only one in over a hundred scholarship pages applied to me, a pharmacy major.

State of Residence:
If you live in Hawaii, California, or Colorado, this section is for you! I was shocked at how many scholarships there were for these residents. Again, there were many for each state, but these three took the lead by far. There were only about two for Pennsylvania that applied to me, so this section didn't really help much.

Race/Ethnicity/Gender/Etc:
As a white individual, there were obviously no scholarships for me in this section under race or ethnicity. There were a lot for individuals of Hawaiian descent, Native American and who are African American. As a female, there were not as many as I expected and though there were various ones for females, only about two applied to me. Still gender is a very small portion of this section in comparison to race/ethnicity.

Disease/Illness:
As a healthy individual, I did not even read this section, so I apologize for not being able to review this section for you.

In conclusion, I think that this is worth the buy because if you can win just one scholarship, it makes purchasing this book worthwhile. There is a great range of scholarship value and amount of time one would need to devote to the scholarship. I would recommend this book to anyone. If you are an engineering or dental hygenist student, african american, or from Hawaii or California, you MUST buy this book!

Good luck to all buyers!! :-)

This book has a ton of information on scholarships and grants that are available to undergraduate/graduate students.

I am working on locating scholarships, I already started thru my employer, but I am working on paying my way thru and even went for a FASFA Loan from the US dep't of ed .

I wished that I looked into it sooner, free advise for anyone looking for money for college, I even helped advise another family to look into this book.

worth the money spent & Good Luck to anyone looking for answers.