I suggest you explore all federal funding and grant options at the Federal Student Aid website http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/

You may also want to read the Handbook of the Pell Grant — this is an 86 page document that contains everything about the grant

http://ifap.ed.gov/sfahandbooks/attachments/0203Vo3MasterFile.pdf

Or you can call the Federal Student Aid Information Center http://www.ed.gov/programs/fpg/gtepfpg.pdf at 1-800-433-3243 and ask them if there are any programs for women of your age

Aside from FAFSA http://www.fafsa.ed.gov and Pell Grant http://www.ed.gov/programs/fpg/index.html , you may want to explore private foundation grants

Also check out Fastweb http://www.fastweb.com

For private grants, you may want to check the Foundation Center’s Foundation Grants for Individuals Online http://gtionline.fdncenter.org . It’s a subscription based website ($9.95 per month) and their opening blurb says that the database is ideal for “students, artists, academic researchers, libraries and financial aid offices.” You may be able to find grants from private foundations.

For non education grants you can go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) http://www.cfda.gov and Grants.gov http://www.grants.gov – these are two sites created by the federal government to provide transparency and information on grants. Browse through the listings and see if you can find any grant that would support a for-profit venture.

Even if you buy books on “how to get grants” or list that supposedly has information on grants — all of them are mere rehash of what CFDA has, albeit packaged differently.

Most of that stuff is a SCAM.

The government does give you free grants to go to college though. Just check out the FAFSA website.

You should also apply for as many scholarships as possible. That’ll help greatly. The balance can be put on student loans – they pass them out like cnady these days. You’ll be fine.