If you have children who are Juniors or Seniors in high school and are college bound you are probably starting to think "How the heck am I going to pay for their education?" Hopefully, they have been doing their part and have done well academically and participated in sports and/or activities. So now is a prime time for them to start making a list of what scholarships they can apply for. If they check out collegeboard.com or scholarships.com, they can enter their information and search by certain criteria. I recommend putting in as little criteria as possible because some of the scholarships will not appear for your student but they may actually be eligible to apply. It's a lot of work to go through these lists which is why summer vacation is a good time to do it. Some scholarships have deadlines early on in the school year, so if they hit the ground running in the fall with a list of scholarships they want to apply for and even start filling out applications, they can seek out any recommendations they need, get copies of transcripts, etc. once they are back in school.

Last year, my daughter missed out on applying for a scholarship she could have easily qualified for because she didn't know about it. Do not rely on your school's guidance office to find these scholarships. You need to seek them out!

If your school's guidance office is open during the summer (my daughter's is only on certain days) have your student ask if they can make an appointment during those hours to get any information they need from their guidance counselor before they start getting bombarded in the fall with requests.

College is a big expense and finding the money to pay for it can be a big undertaking. Don't take it all on your shoulders, get your high schooler involved! If they are ready to go out on their own in a year or two, they should be ready to work for it.