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Google your way to scholarships

Ohhhh google google google. How I love thee. Let me count the ways... Results 1 - 100 of about 8,860,000 for engineering scholarships. SAY WHAT?!?!?

There is no way I could sift through that many results to find the perfect scholarship for me. So the goal is to get the results to a more manageable number.

Google reacts well to certain parameters. If you are looking for a nursing scholarship, you can search by that specific phrase by placing it in quotation marks. "Nursing Scholarship" pulls up 368,000 results while just searching for nursing scholarship without the quotes pulls 559,000.

Another great parameter is the OR/AND function. These two little words may not give you a lot of points in scrabble but using them in conjunction on google will beef up your scholarship results score immensely. Try searching for Pediatric Nursing Scholarship. 271,000 results. Try searching for "Pediatric Nursing Scholarship". 18 results. Now we're going to add just one word, this is going to be your favorite word out of the entire English language because it will provide more information on how to successfully put your scholarship opportunities within reach: Application. You need to fill out an application to apply for a scholarship. You know that, so make sure you include it in your search query. "Pediatric Nursing Scholarship" AND "application" returns 10 results. That eliminates 8 results you didn't need to look at because they did not pertain to applying for a scholarship.

Probably one of the best parameters to use is the filetype parameter. Filetype will only show specific file extensions like pdf or word documents, which is the primary format most scholarship applications are in. Example. Search scholarship application in google, receive 9,950,000 results. Search "scholarship application", receive 924,000 results. Search "scholarship application" AND "nursing", receive 124,000 results. Search (filetype:doc OR filetype:pdf) "scholarship application" AND "nursing", receive 2,310 results. From almost 10 million to just over 2 thousand, that is a much more manageable number.

Add in a few extra ingredients, your city (example: (filetype:doc OR filetype:pdf) "scholarship application" AND "nursing" AND "los angeles"), your school, your state, your field of study... mix it up, try different arrangements and you'll have a very strong scholarship portfolio to choose from.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to comment here and I genuinely wish you the best of luck on your scholarship quest. I'm in the same boat with you so I feel the exasperation.

Good Luck!

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