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Here is some advice from a current college student who managed to get over $100,000 in grants and scholarships for college. Despite what you may think, I wasn't a straight-A student in high school, and my SAT scores were pretty mediocre. So how did I get so much money to help pay for my undergraduate education? I started research early, explored all options, and was willing to step beyond my comfort zone.

Whether you are attending a small, private college or a large university, your higher education shouldn't be accompanied by the sign, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." There are more options available to college students now than ever before, and they are easier to get to.

Part of the reason for this is that, while many people are struggling to get by on woefully insufficient salaries, there are also a lot of people making a lot of money. A study conducted by PanAsianBizReports indicated that as many as 1 in 33 people in the U.S. are millionaires, and the average started salary for college graduates ranges from $28,000 a year for Psychology graduates to as much as $52,000 for engineering graduates. What this means for those looking at colleges or universities is that more people are donating to their Alma Maters, and they are donating more. This allows undergraduate institutions to offer better financial aid packages to prospective students.

It is important when trying to fund your education that you explore all your options. Websites like www.fastwebs.com offer free listings of scholarships based on your interests, career, activities, affiliations, and even disabilities. These websites can inundate you with scholarships, so the important thing to remember is to only apply for the ones that seem suited to you and that you think you have a reasonable chance at winning. Even if the amount is only $500, that's still $500 you won't ever have to pay anyone.

Even with all the external options for financial aid, your best bet and the place where the majority of your financial aid is going to come from is the college or university you are interested in. If an affordable college or university is very important to you, you can buy (or, better yet, check out from a library) a copy of the (latest) Fiske Guide to Colleges or a similar compendium. Such books will have ratings and reviews of a college's financial aid performance compared to its peers and will usually provide the dollar amount of average financial aid a typical student receives.

If a college scholarship requires

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