Scholarships aren’t concerned with social lives, they are concerned with academia and making the school look good. How? Well scholarships will be taken away from you if you do not maintain a certain (usually high) average. High averages and test scores make a school look very good. Scholarships are kind of like a school’s way of saying, “If you come here and make us look good. We will pay your way.”

Student Assistance programs, like OSAP (Ontario Student Assistant Program) gives students money based on their personal finances and, if they live at home, their parent’s income. They do not care how you spend it. You just have to be enrolled in a school and pay them back within 6 months of graduation before they hit you with high interest rates.

The extra money is called a stipend.

These high end scholarships are not directly involved with the school. They have requirements that are usually along the lines of “If you are going to attend *(college)*, and you are a *(native residence, ethnicity, etc.)*, you will get full tuition and stipend amount.