Scholarships/Grants For Married, Full-time Working Mom?

Decide the school you are able to attend based on classes, schedule, online availability, and contact their financial aid office.

Yes, the counseling/financial aid center at your school!
Assuming you're attending a real college/university.
If it's one of those for profit types, you know, the kind that advertises on TV all day, BEWARE, what they call financial aid is nothing more than a huge, high interest loan.

A coworker recently decided she wants to go back to school. She went to a University on her lunch and spoke to an aid officer. She had to make an appointment so she did not have to sit and wait but she said they totally helped. She just told them she was thinking of going back to school and looking at financial aid options. They of course gave her info for the school and sites to visit and paperwork to consider.

I would check with your employer to see if they will pay your way. As long as the degree would be in some way related to or help you do your job better, they might be willing to foot the bill. Past employers of mine had this benefit, and even Starbucks is doing something like this now.

I would go to the Financial Aid department of the school you would like to attend. They can give you tried and true advice on specific sites and potential scholarships. Also, check out the school website because there is usually a link somewhere within the site to apply for scholarships.

It is crazy with all of the things thrown at you when you are about to go to college. My daughter is in her 2nd year of college now and we still get tons of junk email about financial aid, scholarships, etc. Many just want to get you on a mailing list.

Also, academics play a role as well. My daughter received a check from her school this past January which covered most of the tuition we had already paid. Turns out that she was given a scholarship and had no idea about it until a check showed up in the mail. She's been on the Dean's list with 4.0 for 2 straight semesters and the scholarship came from the business school where she was in the top 10 perfect of all undergraduates at the entire campus... UTD in Richardson.

We opted out of Fasfa and all of the other paperwork but certainly check into because it can help many people.

Best wishes to you.

There are options out there, but depending on whether or not you have previously obtained a degree, there may be limitations. As a returning adult student for a 2nd career, you are not eligible for Federal grants or deferred loans. You can still get Federal loans, but they accrue interest right away, instead of waiting until you are out of school.

Some grants/scholarships are available through various institutions & organizations, but you will need to read the criteria for each to see if you qualify.

I found the information in this link helpful when I started looking at my financial options when I went back to school.

http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/nontraditional.phtml

Good luck!

I think you will spend enormous amounts of time for little payoff doing it this way. You're right - it's a black hole and you have no way of knowing what's reliable. Half the time you find something intriguing and then find out there's a ridiculous interest rate for a loan.

Go to the college(s) which interest you, interview, and discuss financial aid with the individual FinAid offices. They are on top of all the reliable sources, including their own scholarship funds and donors. They will do a much better job piecing together a nice package for you than you will do on your own. If they want you as a motivated student, they will work on your behalf.

The financial aid office at your college, or the one you want to go to, will be able to tell you many options and point you toward resources outside of their office. When I was in grad school, I wandered in there one day, just to see if there might be some kind of scholarship available to me. I walked out with a grant that paid for half of my tuition at an expensive private university.This grant was only available to single mothers (I was in my 40's and divorced). All I had to do was fill out a one page form right there in the office and maybe provide a copy of my tax return. There are a lot of small little scholarships that aren't very well publicized, but the financial aid staff knows all about them.

http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/nontraditional.phtml

http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/opportunity/questions.html

You're still going to have to Google 'continuing education financial help' but these are good places to start.