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The academic year is winding down but so is the amount of time left to apply for Scholarships.com’s Short & Tweet Scholarship: Applicants now have just one week to enter to win a $1,000 scholarship or Kindle for college!

Whether this is the first you’re hearing about this award or you’ve applied multiple times since the contest relaunched on April 2nd, here’s a quick refresher on what you need to do to create a scholarship-worthy entry:

• Follow @Scholarshipscom on Twitter.
• Mention @Scholarshipscom in a tweet answering the question "What was the most important thing you learned this year *AND* why?" Once you do this, you are entered to win a $1,000 scholarship or one of two Kindles.
• You may enter as many times as you want until May 14th but please limit your tweets to three per day (and no tweeting in class!). Each tweet will be a stand-alone entry and tweets that are submitted by non-followers, exceed 140 characters, do not include @Scholarshipscom, do not answer the entire question or are submitted after the May 14th deadline will not be considered. On May 15th, the Scholarships.com Team will begin reviewing Short & Tweet entries to determine which tweets are most deserving of the awards.

Think you have what it takes to take the Short & Tweet prize this time around? Get thee to Twitter and wield those 140 characters wisely! For more information about this scholarship and others, conduct a free scholarship search today. Good luck, everyone!

Note: The Short & Tweet Scholarship is offered by Scholarships.com and is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Twitter.

In 200 years, one of your relatives is going to be digging in what is now your backyard. They are going to find something that you buried in 2012 and it is going to put any financial woes they have to rest. The Big Dig Scholarship asks you to select that item! Keep in mind that the item you choose must be currently available for purchase today and is under $500. You must then write an essay that is between 500 – 1000 words explaining why you chose the item you did. Be sure to also include:

• Where you could purchase the item today?
• How much does this item cost?
• What made you choose the item?
• Why do you believe that the item will have immense value in 200 years from now?

For more information on this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

With just over two weeks left to enter our “You Like Me…You Really Like Me” Facebook Scholarship, we wanted to remind our fans of a key piece of the judging criteria: Don’t just tell us you like us – tell us WHY you like us! We’re looking for the person who best describes how Scholarships.com’s resources are helping them prepare for and afford college so, while we love hearing that you think we’re the BOMB.com, we’d much rather have you detail how, for example, our blog post on tips to stay calm on test day helped prepare you for the ACT/SAT or how our College Prep section jumpstarted on your college planning. Remember, the more you share, the better your chances are of winning $1,000 or one of two Kindles!

If you’re new to Scholarships.com and unfamiliar with its contents, take a tour and check out everything we have to offer. Our site is teeming with info – from choosing the right school and major to living with a roommate and preparing for an intership – so if you like us (really like us), tell us why. Just be sure to do it soon: The deadline to “like” us and leave your thoughtful comment is March 31st. For more details, check out our Facebook page. Good luck!

As a Scholarships.com member, you have free access to a customized scholarship search, detailed financial aid information, an organized college search, standardized test study guides and more. Like what you see? Spread the word about Scholarships.com to your friends through our “Tell A Friend” Scholarship and you'll have a chance to win money for college - $1,000 for you and $500 for one of your buddies! Just enter your email and password to obtain a personalized referral link. Then take that link and blog it, tweet it, email it, IM it or Facebook it and for every one of your friends who creates a profile on our site by clicking your link, you will be entered to win a $1,000 award. There’s no limit as to how many people you can send your link to and if you win, one of your friends will be chosen at random to win $500.

Remember, the more friends you refer, the more entries you’ll get until the March 31st deadline. For more information, visit our Tell A Friend page and for additional scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search.

The Germans from Russia Heritage Society Youth Essay Contest encourages students from around the world to learn about the history and culture of the German-Russians, people who emigrated from Germany into Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, in the USA, Canada and other countries in the Western Hemisphere, these people have become known as Germans from Russia.

The GRHS Essay Contest is open to all students attending public, private, parochial or home schools and to students attending accredited universities as full-time undergraduate students. The subject of the paper must be directly related to German-Russian history heritage or culture and be the contestant’s original work. A contestant does not need to be ethnic German-Russian to enter the contest. Resubmission of previously judged work is not permitted.

For more on this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

Here at Scholarships.com, we make a point to advocate the importance of funding your college education the right way – for free! – and while financing your higher education solely from scholarships is an amazing feat, there is a factor to consider: scholarship displacement.

If you don’t know what scholarship displacement is, you’re not alone. Believe it or not, winning a scholarship may not be the end-all be-all when it comes to paying for school because they can complicate the financial aid package offered by your intended university. Why? When a student wins a scholarship, the college may reduce the student’s need-based financial aid package to compensate. For example, say a university offers a student a $15,000 grant and an additional $15,000 loan to cover the cost of attending. If the student were then to win a scholarship for $15,000, the college could retract its $15,000 grant. Colleges call this an over-award and the scholarship providers call it displacement.

Although this may seem discouraging, it shouldn’t dissuade you from applying to scholarships altogether. Instead, do your homework, speak with your admissions counselor and know where your intended college stands when it comes to their scholarship policies. If you’re brining a lot of scholarship dollars to the table, you have options. Every college is different and has their own guidelines when it comes to outside scholarships. If one university doesn’t allow you to put those scholarship dollars to other costs – loans, books, room and board, etc. – enroll at one that does. You could also enlist the help of the scholarship sponsor: Some scholarship providers may have a lot of clout with the college, especially if their scholars make up millions of dollars of funding to the college.

If you have any additional questions about scholarship displacement, don’t hesitate to ask us!

What is your vision for yourself after college? Church Hill Classics and diplomaframe.com want to help you frame your future and attain your dreams. So, show them what your future looks like! They’ll be awarding $6,000 in scholarships - five $1,000 winners plus $1,000 donation to the grand prize winner's school.

To enter: Submit a creation that shares what you want to achieve in your personal and professional life after college. Your entry can be a photograph, collage, poem, drawing, painting, graphic design piece, short typed explanation, or anything YOU can create in an image! Your entry should communicate: This is how I "Frame My Future." Make sure your entry layout will be easy to view and read online.

The top 24 finalists will be announced by Church Hill Classics in April. Then, the top five scholarship winners will be chosen by popular vote on our website (more details about the voting process to come as we get closer to that time).

For more information on this scholarship and other scholarship opportunities, conduct a free scholarship search today!

by Kara Coleman, Scholarships.com Virtual Intern

The National Association for College Admission Counseling recently released a list of the top 10 things college admissions officers consider to be most important in an applicant. When I read it, I was surprised to find that extracurricular activities didn't make the cut! There have been many times when I have said or heard someone else say, “That will look good on a college application.” After all, there is something impressive about being SGA president or being actively involved in a service organization like Key Club. Unfortunately, the data say otherwise.

So if you are a high school junior or senior thinking about college, what should you do? Developing good study habits is extremely important – learning IS the point of attending school! – but don’t sacrifice your extracurriculars. College admissions officers may not consider them to be important but involvement in your school, church and community is oftentimes a big factor when dealing with scholarship applications. When I was in high school, I was a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters and writing an essay about that experience garnered me a $1,000 scholarship from Coca-Cola during my second semester in college. Even if you don’t end up with scholarship bucks, there is no price to be placed on the leadership skills and character development that can result from getting involved.

So what do you think? Should college admissions officers place a higher value on what you do outside the classroom or should academics be all that matters?

This summer, Kara Coleman graduated from Gadsden State Community College with an Associate of Arts degree. She is currently studying communications with concentration in print journalism at Jacksonville State University Kara's writing has been featured in Teen Ink magazine and she is a children's author through Big Dif Books.

by Angela Andaloro, Scholarships.com Virtual Intern

Whether you’re a prospective college student or already a few years in, there’s no doubt that tuition is a major concern. It’s not cheap to be a college student and while student loans can greatly assist you in this struggle, sometimes they’re not enough. That’s where scholarships can help.

Many aren’t aware but November is National Scholarship Month and the perfect time to start your search for scholarships that perfectly meet your needs. Your first step in this journey is throwing away the number one misconception about scholarships – that they are only awarded to “smart kids.” While many scholarships do require that you maintain a certain GPA, grades are not the only criteria. There are scholarships available for athletics, community service, to students pursuing certain careers or majors, and to minorities.

It may seem like the chances of winning a scholarship are slim. That was my mentality when I heard nothing after filling out application after application. Sure, it was frustrating but I didn’t give up. And I’m glad I kept at it: Just a few weeks ago, I saw the fruits of my labor when I was awarded a scholarship from an alumnus at my school!

My biggest piece of advice to students searching for scholarships is to be persistent in your search. If you fill out hundreds of applications, you have hundreds of scholarship opportunities but if you give up and don’t fill out any, your opportunities will reflect that. Utilize every resource you can, like talking to the financial aid office at your school and seeing what they recommend...and don’t forget about the Internet! A little site called Scholarships.com has a plethora of information that can steer you in the right direction. Best of luck and may your scholarship searches be fruitful!

Angela Andaloro is a junior at Pace University’s New York City campus, where she is double majoring in communication studies and English. Like most things in New York City, her life and college experience is far from typical – she commutes to school from her home in Flushing and took nearly a semester’s worth of classes online – but she still likes to hang out with friends, go to parties and feed her social networking addiction like your “average” college student.

by Mariah Proctor, Scholarships.com Virtual Intern

It puts me in a bit of an awkward position to explore what it takes to stand out from the pack: If I am unsuccessful, this blog post won’t even stand out enough for you to finish reading it (which is just cruel irony) but I’ll try my best.

By the time you finish high school, you have a pretty good idea of what sets you apart from your classmates. You’ve figured by then that because you get good grades and you excel at this or that, you are set apart and safely defined. Then you begin attending college and find out that you’re surrounded by a bunch of people who also got good grades in high school and also excelled at the exact same this or that as you. Essentially, you meet a lot of other high schools’ versions of yourself.

So how do you set yourself apart? How do you keep from getting overlooked in scholarship applications, interviews and program admissions? Stop trying so hard to find out what they want. Be excellent and work diligently but stop trying so hard to adjust to some imagined expectation of a winner and instead concentrate on figuring out what you truly have to offer. Explore yourself and take note of the winning qualities and the passions that rule your actions. Only in cultivating what you’re actually good for (and we’ve all got something, even when you’re feeling like you don’t) and making those communicable and usable can you stand out from a crowd of anonymity.

In a world where the pool of people clamoring to fill positions is getting bigger, there are already plenty of cookie cutters and checklists, but there isn’t nearly enough heart. So find yours, show it and watch the rest of the pack fade away.

Mariah Proctor is a senior at Brigham Young University studying theatre arts and German studies. She is a habitual globe-trotter and enjoys acoustic guitar, sunshine and elephant whispering. Once the undergraduate era of her life comes to an end, she plans to perhaps seek a graduate degree in film and television production or go straight to pounding the pavement as an actor and getting used to the sound of slammed doors. Writing has and always will be the constant in her whirlwind life story.