TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): BrokeScholar / TOURBUS Top 21 Ebook

Howdy, y'all, and greetings from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California, the clog dancing capital of southern Orange County.

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On with the show ...

BrokeScholar

You know how schools have a dean's list for students with exceptional grades? Well, I am here to tell you that your fearless bus driver's name never graced such a list. My grades in college were utterly atrocious ... so atrocious that I am all but certain that I graduated from the University of Alabama with a *NEGATIVE* GPA. The only reason I received a degree in the first place was that I had been a student at the University for so long that the University was left with only two options: give me a degree or give me tenure. The degree was cheaper. :P

Well, cheaper for the University anyway. I still had to pay my own tuition. [Here begins the worst segue in the history of Tourbus. Please accept my apologies ahead of time.] Had I been a more diligent student, I might have been able to take advantage of the services offered by BrokeScholar at

http://www.brokescholar.com/ .

Put simply, BrokeScholar is a free search engine that lets you search through a database of more than 900,000 college scholarships. Just go to the BrokeScholar Web site and click on the blue "Start Free Scholarship Search" button in the middle of the page.

In order for BrokeScholar to find scholarships for which you are eligible, you need to provide the site with some personal information. Clicking on the blue "Start Free Scholarship Search" button takes you to a six page form. Page one asks for your name and email address, page two asks for your date of birth and address, page three asks for the name of your college (or the names of the colleges to which you applied) and your expected graduation date, page four asks for your demographic data, page five asks for your activities and interests, and (sadly) the final page tries to sell you some magazines. Just click on the blue "no thanks" button on the magazine ad page to continue.

This dumps you to a preferences page that asks you if you would like to receive email updates and how you found out about BrokeScholar. Complete this page and then click on the blue "Finish>>" button.

This takes you to your profile page and at the bottom of this page is a blue "Search using my profile" button. Click on it and BrokeScholar shows you all of the scholoarships that match your profile. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! :)

BrokeScholar shows you each scholarship's name, how much money is available, and the application deadline. Click on the name of any scholarship and BrokeScholar shows you more in-depth information about that scholarship including applicable majors and schools, contact information, and even a link to the scholarship provider's Web site.

Cool, huh? :)

By the way, even if you don't use BrokeScholar's free search engine, do take a minute to read the site's "Scholarship Q&A" page at

http://www.brokescholar.com/articles/160004.html .

This page debunks a lot of common misconceptions about scholarships such as

Is there such a thing as a guaranteed scholarship? [No.]

Should I have to pay an application fee for a scholarship? [No.]

Are there billions of dollars worth of unclaimed scholarships

every year? [No.]

The scholarship industry has its fair share of con artists. BrokeScholar's Scholarship Q&A page gives you the information necessary to hopefully protect yourself from becoming a victim of one of these con artists.

TOURBUS Top 21 Ebook

Fellow TOURBUS rider Bob Stein writes that he has been

a fan and subscriber to the Tourbus for several years. I've assembled your recommendations for most useful sites in the world into an ebook format which makes for much more pleasant browsing. I've posted it for you here:

http://int.nightkitchen.com/special/tourbus.html

Be sure to download and install the Reader first.

WOW! Thank you Mr. Stein! :)

That's it for today. Have a safe and happy weekend, and we'll talk again soon!

TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): BrokeScholar / TOURBUS Top 21 Ebook