I've been a student for a year now, and I think someone needs to crack the myth that there are "a lot of scholarships for single moms". Seriously. I have bugged my financial aid office, and searched the internet, and I think it's just a slogan to get women to visit websites. I have found a few that were specifically aimed at single mothers- but they are the typical, one award of $1000 scholarships, so most single moms are not going to get any money that way. The only advantage to being a single parent and full time student is that we are often poor enough to qualify for maximum pell grants, state need grants, and whatever need based aid that's available through fafsa. My strategy so far has been to apply as early as humanly possible for the fafsa, apply for my school's foundation scholarships, and let fastweb.com send me scholarship matches. I maintain super high grades, and can whip out a pretty good short essay on why I think sprinkler systems are awesome or whatever. The one thing that I have found is that the more specific you are about what you want to do, and depending on what that is, the more scholarships you can find for students in that field. Nursing, for example, seems to be really huge. Oh, and bugging your financial aid dept (politely of course) can help. If you tell them you have a bad situation, they seem to be able to squeeze out a summer pell grant or some extra loans.
