12 Creative Ways to Pay for College
Top 10 Creative Ways to Pay for College
When I was in high school, I had no financial understanding of how I was going to pay for college. I kept hearing this common talking point what there was north of $1B worth of scholarships that go unused each year. I also thought that only top athletes and students with near perfect standardized test scores were the only ones getting full-ride scholarships. I knew of fastwebs.com and scholarships.com, but wasn’t confident enough to apply for many because I figured that was equivalent to playing the lottery.
However, I did manage to shake my insecurities, and apply to the Gates Millennium Scholarship, which managed to pay the majority of my cost of attendance, but I was still left with >$40,000 in debt. However, I am on track to being debt free in only a year after graduating college.
Throughout college, I would ask students how they were able to pay for college, as well as make note of all the new ways that I had learned about paying for college. I made this list to help give you some ideas. In this post, I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has majored in Computer Science, but in the future, I will follow up on this post after doing more interviews and research on how non-engineering students were able to payback their loans.
- Dual enrollment at a local college for college credit
- AP tests for college credit
- Each subject on the ACT is worth college credit per class in college, so you can earn college credit depending on how high you score per subject
- Each subject on the SAT is worth college credit per class in college, so you can earn college credit depending on how high you score per subject
- Summer internship salary. Majors in Finance, Accounting, Engineering, IT, and Supply Chain Management are known to pay top dollar for their interns
- Start your own IT consulting business
- Start your own freelance web design business
- Create & Sell Apps
- Major related scholarships (e.g. Cyber Security Scholarship) provided by national organizations who are prominent in the industry you plan to work in post college (e.g. National Science Foundation)
- Find a part-time job that offers scholarships. Here are a few: Wendy’s, Target, Chick-fil-a, Publix, Verizon, and Starbucks.
- Freelance Graphic Design
- Freelance User Interface Design
Again, these are not the only ideas out there. I’ll be sure to make a big list of ways to pay back student loans as well as go into detail about the approach I’ve took, and what I’d recommend to others. Stay tuned!