Students get so severely stressed out about finding scholarships even though there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of scholarships out there to be had. A little work just has to go into it. Maybe some organization, some time to actually apply, some more time to review your work, and maybe a little more time to make it extra super appealing to whoever will be reading your application.

Just because you apply for a scholarship doesn’t mean you’ve done a good job at showing the scholarship providers that you deserve it. But you probably do deserve a nice hunk of free money; so take the time these scholarship applications probably deserve instead of just crossing your fingers that some Wizard of Oz type person will just pick your name out of a hat. Give youself a step up!

Start now. See if you’re a match for these scholarships, all due before 2012.

1. Dr Pepper Million Dollar Tuition Giveaway
Deadline: December 31
Award range: $2,500-$100,000
Quick fact: Open to high school juniors through college juniors, Dr Pepper will be awarding 50 different students with big, like really big, scholarships.

2. ScholarshipPoints.com Scholarship
Deadline: December 14
Award range: $500-$10,000
Quick fact: This scholarship’s application process shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.

3. Most Valuable Student Award
Deadline: December 2
Award range: $1,000-$15,000
Quick fact: Open to all high school students, this scholarship is renewable, which means it actually can add up to $60,000 total!

4. Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum Student Essay Contest
Deadline: November 11
Award range: $50-$100
Quick fact: Available for all high school students.

5. STOP hunger Scholarships
Deadline: December 5
Award range: $5,000
Quick fact: All grades, high school and up, with volunteer or community service are eligible to apply for this renewable scholarship–remember, renewable.

6. Imagine America Scholarship Program
Deadline: December 31
Average award: $1,000
Quick fact: High school seniors and college freshman must be attending or plan to attend a participating US career college.

7. Ecologist Initiative Scholarship
Deadline: December 31
Average award: $850
Quick fact: This scholarship is meant to engage young people from around the world in environmental clean-up and conservation projects. If that’s passion of yours, apply!

Will you apply to any of these? How much time do you spend on scholarships applications?

Nothing is ever completely black or white, but here are some details of what the legislation will do:

Overall, the legislation will couple an increase in the government’s borrowing cap with more than $2 trillion in budget cuts over the coming decade, including cuts to federal education spending. So, do you want good news or bad news first?

If you chose “bad news,” skip to the section that says “bad news.” For “good news,” keep reading.

Good news:

Despite the nail biting induced by fear that the Pell Grant program would encounter extremely deep cuts, the program was salvaged. Need a reminder of what the Pell Grant program is? Basically Pell Grants are designated to students from low-income families. They are grants for college that do not have to be repaid. According to the U.S. Despartment of Education, more than 19 million undergraduate students are expected to be awarded Pell Grants in the upcoming academic year. That’s a lot of students and a lot of education.

Instead of harmful cuts to the program, as was expected, the Pell Grants progam will receive $17 billion in funding at no additional cost to taxpayers.

Which leads us to the bad news:

If the Pell Grant program is safe, and at no additional cost to the taxpayers, where does the $17 billion come from? No, not a money tree. Those don’t exist yet (I’m currently working on it in the secret laboratory in my basement). With a money tree out of the picture, money has to be cut from elsewhere. In this case, saving the Pell Grant program came at the cost of government-subsidized loans for graduate and professional students. The loans will be eliminated in July 2012, which means that graduate students would have to pay interest on their loans while still in school. On top of that, the rate reduction on student loan interest for on-time payments will be eliminated.

Together, these two changes are expected to generate $22 billion in savings, with $17 billion allocated for Pell Grants and the remaining $5 billion helping to reduce the deficit.

Nobody was expecting a win-win situation to come out of the legislation, but it will definitely be interesting to see how pitting undergraduate education against graduate and professional education will work in the long run.

Is this good news or bad news? Share your opinion by leaving a comment below.