How to Find College Talent Scholarships

If your student is interested in pursuing a talent like music, art, theater, dance or writing in college you may want to search for applicable college talent scholarships that will give your student “free money” to pursue his or her passion.  If your student has a few particular colleges in mind, then it is as easy as going to the colleges’ websites to see what they offer for talent scholarships.  However, if you want to “shop the field” to see what’s out there, it can be a challenge to find talent scholarships.

Similar to academic merit scholarships, the majority of college talent scholarships are going to come from the colleges themselves.

There are private talent scholarships out there, but they are few and far between, reserved for the top talented students.  I’ve included some resources for these below.

Colleges themselves offer a wide variety of talent scholarships to students who want to pursue their talents in college.  The majority of these scholarships are available for students who want to major in art, theater, dance, music or writing.  However, many colleges also offer talent scholarships for students who don’t wish to major in their talent, but do want to stay involved in it while in college.  This could involve clubs or other organizations on campus or participating in campus productions, contributing to campus publications, marching band, and more.

I have researched colleges around the country and have found over 800 talent scholarships offered directly by the colleges, ranging from hundreds of dollars up to full tuition.

The majority of the talent scholarships offered by colleges are thousands of dollars per year.  These will be listed out on a brand new product I am releasing soon.  Sign up for my Weekly Newsletter to be notified when the new list is available.

As I mentioned earlier, there are also private talent scholarships that are open to talented students who will be attending any college.  It is difficult to find talent scholarships on the major scholarship sites.  It can take forever to search for them.  If you want to try this route, I suggest Niche (search by interest) or Scholarships.com.  I have listed some good resources for finding private talent scholarships below.

Resources for Private Talent Scholarships

Scholastic Art & Writing Scholarships – http://www.artandwriting.org/the-awards/categories/

Davidson Fellows Scholarships (music) – http://www.davidsongifted.org/fellows/

Young Arts Program – http://www.youngarts.org/

National Federation of Music Clubs – http://www.nfmc-music.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=Competition%20%26%20Awards

Educational Theatre Association – https://www.schooltheatre.org/programs/ags/scholarships

Glenn Miller Scholarships – http://glennmiller.org/scholarship/scholarship-information/