During the 1990s, the amount of merit money awarded by selective liberal arts colleges grew by more than 300 percent. As we mentioned, check with your high school counselor, student aid officer, and instructors in your major field of study for scholarship sources. They will be able to advise you of scholarships from both public and private sources. Keep an eye on the bulletin boards in their offices for notices of scholarships and their deadlines.

For example, in a recent year, Duke University awarded 26 freshman no-need scholarships averaging more than $10,000. Boston University offered $3,000 a year for four years to several hundred undecided students with high averages (B or better) who had been accepted for attendance but had not been given aid. Syracuse University, after sending out its acceptances, offered $2,000 a year for four years to 700 students in the top 10 percent of their applicants and who did not qualify for aid.

Community organizations, businesses, labor unions, churches, professional groups or national foundations also award academic scholarships. These funds are often harder to locate than those from the large federal programs. Patriotic, civic and fraternal organizations, religions and ethnic groups, and social and professional clubs will be able to advise you of funds through their local chapters or national headquarters.

Estimates of unclaimed scholarships run as high as $200 million for a given year. These dollars are there for the asking. However, you must find them, and that's why investigating all possible sources of this free money is not only important, it's absolutely necessary. We've listed several individual sources and their addresses as well as reference guides and directories (see below and in our section on Financial Aid Sources and Information). You can find many of these sources on the Internet, at your local bookstores, public and school libraries. Make sure their copies are current as most are updated yearly.

The following web sites will help you to get started in your scholarship search:

• The Financial Aid Information Page. This web site offers information on a wide array of grants and scholarships.
• National Association of Financial Aid Administrators has consumer scholarship tips.
• MACH 25 is a free scholarship search program provided as a public service by CollegeNET.
• The Scholarship Resource Network is a free scholarship search software program and database of college financial aid and scholarship information as well as student loan forgiveness programs with a focus on portable scholarship information. SRN contains more than 8,000 programs with a distribution level of over 150,000.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) web site has information on scholarship scams and how to avoid them.
• ClubScholarship.com: This site has a searchable database which it claims 500,000 awards that allows users to browse for the best matches.
• The Scholarship Page contains basic information and links on scholarships.
• FreSch! has a database of over 2,000 organizations and foundations that offer scholarships, representing approximately 169,000 awards.
• CASHE Financial Aid Service outlines scholarships sponsored by Sallie Mae at Wiredscholar.com. CASHE is a free database that includes thousands of private scholarships, grants, tuition waivers, internships and fellowships.
• FedMoney has a list of all US Government programs benefiting students.

TIP: Once you've located a scholarship, you will need to prove you're deserving of the funds. In addition to academic achievement, some may require essay writing, autobiographies, or getting recommendations. Your leadership ability, heritage and other factors may be considered along with your grade point averages.