Find Scholarships for High ACT Scores

If your child took the ACT test and scored well, you may wonder, is that worth any extra money for college?  Yes, it certainly can be!  So how do you find scholarships for high ACT scores?  Well, it can be very time consuming.  I have some tips below on where to look.

What are high ACT scores?  This really varies from college to college.  Some schools will offer merit scholarships for scores in the low to mid-20s.  Others won’t offer merit money until scores reach the high-20s or into the 30s.  Generally speaking, the higher the score, the greater the scholarship.

How to Find Scholarships for High ACT Scores

1. College Websites – The majority of merit scholarships for high ACT scores are offered by the colleges themselves.  Look at the websites for colleges your child is interested in.  Usually the Scholarships or Financial Aid pages/sections of the college website  will provide details on merit scholarships offered and the associated criteria.  If your child hasn’t narrowed down to a list of schools, or if you want to see everything that’s out there, this can be quite time consuming and you may miss out on some great merit scholarships that you didn’t know were out there.
2. Full Scholarship List – This is my listing of major merit scholarships offered by schools around the country.  By major, I mean these scholarships cover 75% of the price of tuition or greater.  I have spent time compiling this information so that you don’t have to.  There are 170 scholarships on the list based on a minimum ACT score.  These are the “gold standard” for merit scholarships, but there are tons of other smaller scholarships for high ACT scores offered at schools around the country.  They are just going to be a little harder to find.
3. MeritAid.com – You can use MeritAid.com to search for schools offering scholarships by school name or by state.  Your student can also enter a student profile to be matched with scholarships based on his/her strengths.
4. College Confidential Boards – College Confidential has several message boards that go through automatic and competitive merit scholarships.  Most of these boards focus on full-ride and full-tuition scholarships.  I used the best of these boards when I first put together the Full Scholarship List.  I find the boards hard to use for a comprehensive scholarship search because you have to find the most up-to-date listings and there is no way to do a search or filter for what you want to focus on.  You also have to weed through all the extra posts from people who like to comment on message boards.
5. Other Websites – If you do a web search for “scholarships for high ACT scores,” you will see a variety of other sites offering some type of listing.  I have checked out most of these.  Some focus on guaranteed scholarships, meaning that if your student meets the specified criteria, he/she will automatically receive the scholarship.  None of these lists are comprehensive of all scholarships out there, but if you look at several, you may be able to develop a list of other schools to check out.  I recommend going directly to the school websites to verify that the scholarships are still offered and to get all the details.

The bottom line is that there are lots of scholarships for high ACT scores out there that will help you save money on college.  You just need to look for them.