The Scholarship
Scouting Report:
An Insider's Guide to America's Best Scholarships
by Ben Kaplan
Guides to finding and applying for scholarships are plentiful, so
ambitious high-schoolers might as well get one penned by someone who managed to pick up
enough award money to put himself through Harvard.
Kaplan wrote How To Go To College Almost For Free (he garnered "nearly $90,000 in
scholarship winnings," he notes proudly), and now he moves on to examine the most
attractive scholarships nationwide. Kaplan winnows them down to those available to the
largest pool of people (e.g. scholarships not based on region, race or financial need),
and then picks the most lucrative of the bunch.
The result is an odd collection of benefactors, from America's Junior Miss to the Ayn Rand
Institute, but the book is jammed with useful information for the college-bound.
In addition to the necessary procedural details, Kaplan adds anecdotes, tips and past
entries or essays that caught judges' eyes.
The lively, graphics-filled format is pretty goofy, but this is a valuable resource for
scholarship-hungry kids looking for the inside scoop.
B&w illus. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kaplan's first book, How to Go to College Almost for Free (2001), was chockablock with
general information for college-bound teens hunting for scholarship money, but his latest
book really gets down to specifics.
It's a collection of more than 100 carefully selected awards with the usual information on
entry requirements and application procedures but also with great insider's advice on
judging criteria, excerpts from winning scholarship entries, and summaries of the actual
experiences of award winners.
In choosing awards, Kaplan has steered clear of need-based scholarships and focused on
awards that can be used anywhere, and he has made an obvious effort to crisscross age
levels: the Talbot's Scholarship, for example, is for adult women bound for college; the
Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Program is open to students as young as 14.
It's all about mindset, Kaplan says in his cheery, enthusiastic text, and he provides lots
of advice, with even more available on his interactive Web site.
Stephanie Zvirin Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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