You have to be attending college to receive the scholarship, and usually you can only apply for the upcoming year. There are no age limits for scholarships in general, so unless the specific scholarship you are applying for says something like, “For students age 18-25” or “For students over age 40” it is fine to apply at any age. Just not earlier than the year before you will be attending college.

None of those answers are entirely correct. A scholarship is different in the sense that an entity like a private organization, a corparation, in some cases a govt entity like a school disrict, or a community club control the criteria and it is not always based on age. These entities set the rules on scholarships, which are often mistaken as a grant (Pell). Both, scholarships and grants are free money and they mean somewhat the same thing but in the Higher Education world, a grant is typically given by an entity like the Fed govt, State govt, or the school themselves. These grants dont have age limits and are mostly based on financial need. Some on educational interest like Science, foreign language, math. Check this site out on the grants offered by the Fed govt:

http://ifap.ed.gov/FSACounselors/clcf/grants.html

Not all scholarships are based on financial need. Some may have grade level limits like you have to be a senior in high school but not all. Scholatships come from all kinds of sources with different requirements like grades, financial need, talents, interest, personal characteristic, submitting an essay, being part of a minority group, first in your family to go to college. I mean the list goes on.

I have actually received a scholarship when I was 16. I work for a company that gave away a couple of scholarships to I believe they were like 10-12 years old kids. It was on the Ellen Generes Show I think.

www.collegeanswer.com and www.fastweb.com are great places to start and start early! Even if you start early and you get few to no scholarships you learn about the requirements and you can start early fufilling those requirements to better your chances. That would mean you would be ahead of the game! : )

Saving money helps too to reduce the amount of loan you may need to borrow! Check out Upromise.com and tell your parents. Its a way to save for college two ways. Through a 529 Plan or if you want just by shopping at vendors that are Upromise vendors. And yes McDonalds is included in that list of vendors! : )

Hope this helps.

18

YOu can only get a scholarship if youo are either graduating High School and moving on to college, or are goin to that college already and moving into the next year. As long as you are old enough to go and attend college, you are old enough to apply for a scholarship…