Improve Your College Grant Search

Search for Grants By Subject

Where many students get grant-finding wrong is in the early stages of their search. They take aim at the broad side of a barn hoping to hit something. But the pot of grant money is massive—if you tackle it this way, guaranteed you’ll burn out before you even find one that matches your needs, realistically. What’s the trick?

A precision-tuned grant search. Fact is you’re not qualified for most of the student grants floating around out there. But you are probably qualified for one or two, maybe even a handful, if you’re lucky. But that’s the good news. If you can narrow down the grant heap incrementally, to those few, focus your energies on applying just for those, you’ve got a real chance to land some grant money for your education.

There are a number of strategies you might go with and in another article you can learn about tackling grants from the point of student type. But what if you know a lot about what you want to study and what you’d like to do with you your career? That’s a good place to start.

Grants in Arts Subjects

The Arts are vast and students don’t just study “arts,” they know what they are passionate about: Creative Writing, Photography, Dance, Theater, Film, Music, Culinary Arts, or a fusion of these. Can you see that once you’ve chosen, say, film, the once massive list of student grants is sharply slashed?

National Endowment for the Arts, art institutes or art schools, private arts organizations and foundations—these are all fertile sources for Arts-centric grants.

Science-Specific Grants

The sciences are massive in and of themselves and no two are alike. Do you want to explore grants for the physical sciences like chemistry and biology, or the social sciences like psychology or anthropology? And within each are smaller niche studies common to graduate level and doctoral level students diving much more vertically into their area of specialization.

Science subjects have eluded many minority and female students in the past. Now these fields are hungry for diverse perspectives and styles of scholarship. to these ends the grants for minorities and women are numerous. Popular sources are the federal government (SMART Grant and the TEACH Grant), colleges and universities, and professional organizations.

Math

Math is yet another of those STEM subjects under-represented by minorities and women. Math can be applied as in economics, statistics, and accounting and finance, or it can be academic/theoretical, as in combinatorial mathematics, and geometry.

The federal and state governments are good sources of math grants, as are colleges and universities and professional associations in the field.

IT

Technology continues to expand at the speed of light and, guess what? It’s a STEM subject. Minority and female students take heed: here are even more grant opps with your name on them.

Best strategy is to shop for technology grants based on your area of specialization, such as programming, software engineering, hardware engineering, computer sciences, even internet marketing—a growing and trendy area of specialization.

The federal government offers grants for STEM students and you’ll find a few federal agencies—Homeland Security, FBI and CIA, NOAA, NASA, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration—that fund lucrative fellowships and internships for students studying in a related tech field.

Engineering

Again, a STEM subject with massive push for minority and female involvement. Not only should you explore the general federal grants, but evaluate the federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Geologic Service, for very good internship and fellowship opportunities.

The field of engineering is comprised of a few dozen niche industries, everything from aerospace engineering to petroleum engineering. A good tip: find a professional organization in your particular specialty, join as a member and you get access to any educational engineering grants and scholarships they might offer, as well as national and regional conferences, networking opportunities and other educational events.

Health Sciences

Nurses, doctors, and allied healthcare professionals are all in very high demand. Nurses especially have wide access to various nursing grants large and small. The federal government funds the grant-for-work program, National Health Service Corps available for Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives and Psychiatric Nurses, besides an assortment of other primary care doctors and professionals.

State governments are usually ready to dole out the money for nursing as well, usually in return for service within the state, a kind of repayment program.

Besides these excellent sources the many nursing associations also offer grants: tuition, travel and research.

Business

Business-specific grants are best mined at your college or university or through professional organizations. But here’s the thing, dozens of career pathways fall under the field of BUSINESS: Marketing, Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Human Resource Management, Advertising, Communications, and many more. Again, your best strategy for winning grant money is to narrow down your career goals and hand-pick those grants for which you really are most well-suited.

Tip: If you’re African American, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American you are in high-demand in the business field. Why? History has kept you under-represented in the “white collar” world and as such your options for student grant money multiply exponentially. If you’re a woman you will find excellent grant programs from women’s professional organizations as well as those targeting women trying to return to the workplace.

Vocational

Vocational and trade careers have blossomed as students realize their potential to excel may be outside the traditional liberal arts-college pathway. And higher education has greased the slide for some very good careers: construction, welding, HVAC, automotive, cosmetology, and some IT jobs.

Vocational grant sourcesmay be nearly anywhere, including government sources, business and industry, schools, and other organizations.