Outside Scholarships

Outside Scholarships

The Office of Financial Aid at MCC recognizes that students often have expenses that are not met by their grants and scholarships offered through us. To help you obtain additional funding, we encourage you to seek out and apply for outside scholarships. Winning outside scholarships can reduce or eliminate your need to borrow through educational loan programs, greatly reducing the burden of repayment later.

Outside scholarships are sources of funding that are not provided through MCC, or the MCC Foundation. These funds may come from local or national businesses, the State of Arizona, fraternal or religious organizations, a professional organization, or any other party outside of MCC and the Department of Education.

To help you in your search, we’ve provided a number of resources below. There are search engines for you to complete your own easy search, and highlighted scholarship opportunities that we’ve found. You can find scholarship opportunities for your major, ethnicity, academic profile, interests, and other qualities. Each scholarship will have its own application process, qualifications, and deadlines.

Please know that inclusion on this page does not constitute MCC’s endorsement or recommendation of any particular organization, individual, point of view, products or services provided by an organization.

Scholarship Databases

Several popular national databases are listed below to help you conduct your own scholarship search. It’s easy to search these databases and find scholarships that may be right for you!

• Fast Web
• scholarships.com
• College Board- Big Future
• Health Resources and Service Administration
• Pathways to Science
• Career One Stop
• Open Education Database
• Hispanic Student Scholarships 
• Scholly 
• Bold
• Arizona Community Foundation

Scholarship Scams – What to look out for

Every year, thousands of Americans are defrauded by scholarship scams. Scam operations often look just like a legitimate organization and may even use official-sounding names.

The Office of Financial Aid has developed a list of what to look out for when you’re searching for scholarships. We’ve also already vetted the scholarships and databases we post to our website to make sure that they don’t appear to be scams.

When evaluating whether a scholarship offer is a scam, look for the following signs:

1. Application Fees – If there’s a price to apply for the scholarship, don’t do it. No matter how small the fee.
2. Guaranteed Winnings – No legitimate organization would make this promise. If the organization promises guaranteed winning of an award, don’t apply.
3. Everybody is Eligible – Every organization offering funds has an ideal candidate in mind. Some scholarship qualifications are broader than others, but there are qualifications you’ll have to meet to be considered.
4. The Unclaimed Aid Myth – While it is true that there are millions of dollars in scholarship funds, it doesn’t go unclaimed. Yes, you need to apply to be considered, but you also need to meet the qualifications of the organization for the award.
5. Unusual Requests for Personal Information – Yes, there is information about yourself, your school, your financial aid application, that you may need to provide. However, you should never need to provide a cancelled check, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or your social security number.
6. Spelling and Grammar Errors – The websites of legitimate organizations will be free of spelling and grammatical errors. Their websites will look professional overall.

You can find additional information about how to spot scholarship scams at the FinAid website.