 What's happening guys? It's Shane here. So this is like the third time that I've recorded this video because apparently I don't know how to use a camera but anyways this is one of the most requested topics I have gotten on this channel and that is how do you pay for college without going into debt. Yes that's right this video is going to be how you can pay for college with zero dollars in debt, graduate completely debt-free and get everything paid for. Now before we start the video I do have a confession to make and that is that I am a little bit of a scholarship nerd. Each year I was in college I got five figures in scholarships and it wasn't enough to pay for all of my college. I did graduate with some debt but if I knew then what I know now I would have been able to graduate completely debt-free. I would have nothing to pay whatsoever so I'm going to help you guys out. I'm going to tell you what I did right what I did wrong and right now if you are about to go to college this is the biggest opportunity you will ever get in your entire life for getting free money. And I wish I would have known about this earlier because I would have really planned it out better than I did and hopefully if this can just help a few of you guys out it'll be worth it and all the best. And no kidding even if you just implement a few of the tips I'm going to share with you and I can almost guarantee you you haven't heard most of these before you will save ten thousand dollars or more almost guaranteed. And it doesn't matter what background or situation you came from doesn't matter if you're rich or you're poor you're a great student who has perfect grades or you're a middle student or you're a horrible student or maybe you're middle class or maybe you got a sugar mama or maybe you don't have a sugar mama doesn't matter these tips will help you out no matter what situation that you're in. And the only thing that's going to stop you from saving a ton of money here is if you forget to smash the like button. So don't forget to do that. No but seriously it does help the channel out tremendously if you smash the like button it really helps with the algorithm so please do that I would really appreciate it and it would sincerely help me a lot. So I'm going to jump right in with the first tip on the list which is going to be the low hanging fruit this is going to be the easiest money you can possibly get and that is to get your rich parents to pay for everything. Just kidding I'm going to assume that you were poor like I was and your family is not going to help you out at all. So the first thing you want to do is go to your good old trustee high school guidance counselor and ask them what scholarships your high school offers and what scholarships that your local community offers. And like I said these are the low hanging fruit these are very easy for you to get because not very many people apply for them because they're not qualified for them because chances are not that many people go to your high school and they're usually going to be somewhere around five hundred to a thousand dollars each sometimes they'll get up to like maybe five thousand dollars and a few hours of work can seriously get you like five to ten thousand dollars. I personally won I think around twelve to thirteen thousand dollars just from doing this step alone and like I said most of these only have a few applicants that can apply to them so if you're even just a decent student what'll end up happening is you will apply to them and the scholarship committees will have to wipe the drool off of the checks before they hand them to you. And just remember that all of these businesses and local communities and all these people they get tax benefits from these scholarships so it's a win-win situation for everybody. And just to make this whole situation very very simple let's say the college you want to go to is fifteen thousand dollars a year you want to go to a four-year college so you need sixty thousand dollars total to pay for the tuition for your university experience. And let's say from step one alone you got ten thousand dollars so now you've got ten thousand out of sixty thousand paid for it and there's fifty thousand more that you need to get paid for. Now the next step is to look at the websites of the colleges that you're applying to and you need to see what scholarships they offer. And this is actually the most important step on the list because this one step alone can get everything paid for. And there's two secrets here the first one is you want to actually physically call the financial aid office at the college and ask them what scholarships are available. A lot of the time the scholarships either aren't on the website at all or they're buried somewhere and you'd have to search hours in order to find them so just save yourself the time the trouble and just call the financial aid office and ask them which ones are available. And then the second secret here is to apply to as many colleges as you can because it's very very random what colleges offer scholarships to what people. So for instance your friend might get a really amazing scholarship offer to the same college that you got into and for some reason they didn't give you the same scholarship offer and it just seems totally random because you guys have similar stats. So you want to use a shotgun approach here and apply to a bunch of different colleges and you really don't want to have your heart set on one college. I know a lot of people grow up you know watching like football or basketball and they fall in love with this one university and they really want to go there. But listen money talks and if that university doesn't offer you a good scholarship you need to put an X through it. So like I said before it's possible to get everything paid for with just this step but just to break this down let's say you apply to 30 colleges you get into 10 of them and two of them offer you a really really good financial aid package where they give you basically like let's say a half ride scholarship so they pay for half of everything. So $30,000. So at this point you've got $40,000 paid for and there's 20,000 more that you need to pay. The next step is probably the least well known step on the list which is to look into essay contests. This is the biggest secret on the list because these essay contests are basically just like scholarships but they're not advertised as scholarships so not that many people apply to them. A lot of the time you will be the only person who applies to these and the money is just as green as scholarship money. This is one of the least utilized of all the steps on this list because let's be honest high school students are kind of lazy and a lot of them don't want to write any extra essays. But the big secret here is you're going to get the same 5 to 10 maybe 15 prompts over and over again and so once you've written about 5 to 10 essays all you really have to do is just copy paste and then just change a few little things here and there and then you're done. So all you really have to do is just take one weekend where you don't play Fortnite or Apex Legends or Call of Duty, you don't binge watch Rick and Morty and you just write a bunch of essays in that one weekend and then you've done 90% of the work right there and there's very very little competition for these essays like I said so you want to apply to all of them even if you don't think that you fit the criteria and a lot of these essays end up getting zero applicants so there was one essay where I actually won first second and third place and I think the total was like 1750 or something like that and then I had a friend who applied to an essay that was for minorities and this guy was like wider than sour cream and he ended up winning the essay contest for minorities and the only reason I'm saying that is just to illustrate that you should apply to as many as possible even if you don't think that you qualify so let's say that you won another $10,000 just to make this simple so now you have $10,000 to go and all your tuition is paid for the next thing you want to do is you want to look into your social and professional network and what I mean by that is you want to think about your religious organization so let's say you have a church that you go to you want to see if they offer any scholarships you want to maybe ask your parents to see if their job or their career offers any scholarships maybe you have a cousin who works at Google and Google might offer scholarships to extended family members and this is very very important because you will be one of the only people who qualifies for the scholarships and then out of the few people who qualify almost nobody knows about them so you will have a really really good chance of winning these I mean think about it who has a cousin who works at Google not that many people so if you do you definitely want to take advantage of that another big thing here is if like let's say you're a minority like there might be an organization for only Indian people in your community and only Indians can apply to those scholarships so you definitely want to take advantage of that and leverage those opportunities where you can and you really want to get specific here and figure out what exactly makes you unique and if you have to and you haven't done it already write down a list of the things that make you unique and then apply to scholarships that fit those criteria so let's say you make another ten thousand dollars here which is totally realistic you got everything paid for you're good to go but now let's say you want to pay for your room and board as well so that's where the next step comes in and this step is where most people i'd say 98% of people this is the step where almost everybody starts at and that is searching online for scholarships and so these are going to be more competitive you're going to have less of a chance of winning these scholarships but the great thing here is you've already done all the hard work because you've already written all the essays and you already have your application down so it's like you're playing this game on easy mode everybody else is an amateur and you're already a professional you already know what to do all you got to do is copy paste and then just change a few little things here and there and just send them off and you really want to apply to as many of these as you can preferably over a hundred you've planted the seed you've plowed the field you've harvested the wheat you've kneaded the dough and now all you got to do is put that bread in the oven copy and paste is going to be your best friend here you know you've done all the work so all you got to do is copy paste and then just change a few things here and there and you will probably wear down the control v control c and control f buttons on your computer but that's totally okay because with all this scholarship money you're going to be able to afford to buy new buttons a new keyboard maybe even a new laptop now i never used any of these paid sites out there that you know are around right now i'm sure you've seen them before i used completely free resources i just use google.com but there's a few sites that i've read around that are really good options here and if you want to use the paid sites you can but the ones that i will recommend are going to be scholarships.com fastweb.com of course good old google.com the college monk.com then there's a really good subreddit called our scholarships that has great lists as well now an additional thing here is your public library will have what are called scholarship handbooks which is basically where they do all the work for you they go out they do all the research and they compile a list of different scholarships that are offered then all you have to do is just go to the library completely free copy everything take it home and then apply to those scholarships and the big secret here is you need to apply to as many scholarships as you can preferably over a hundred in this step ideally you want to do over a hundred to give yourself the best chances and with this step alone it will be very very easy for you to win ten thousand dollars in scholarships or more and i probably spent about twenty to thirty hours you know writing the essays and applying to scholarships but let's break down the numbers here let's say you spend twenty hours doing that and then you win sixty thousand dollars well that's about three thousand dollars an hour which is about twenty seven hundred dollars an hour more than a doctor makes so i think that's probably worth it and another big thing here that i forgot to mention actually is you want to start as early as possible so preferably you want to start this the summer of your junior year because a lot of the scholarship deadlines are actually in october and there's actually even a few scholarships that are for juniors only so you want to definitely have all your essays written and everything good to go by october of your junior year of high school and starting early will also give you the added benefits of being able to perfect your application being able to really hone down your essays and make them absolutely perfect and then also it's a good idea just to have somebody else proofread your essays and that does take a little bit of time and after doing all this you can go ahead sit back relax enjoy an alcohol-free beverage and watch that sweet sweet tax-free scholarship money just pour into your bank account now applying to scholarships obviously isn't the only way to get money there's other ways of doing it i think you guys know about grants like the pel grant for instance or the grants that you can get if you've done military service i think these are pretty well known to people um let me know if you guys want me to make a video on it and i will and you can also pay for college by just minimizing your costs as well so you can get a roommate you can rent textbooks instead of buying them you can learn how to use a crock pot so you're not spending 50 bucks a day eating out you can also get a part-time job or do side hustles there was one year i think it was my third year of college where i made over 28 000 just doing side hustles alone and i actually did a video on that i'll link it in the little card that pops out and by the way let me know if you have any questions in the comments down below i respond to all my comments and i actually pay attention to what my viewers want and then i make videos about them so it'll help you guys out and if this video was helpful to you i will be making a ton of extremely valuable videos just like this in the future that i wish that i had a few years back that will help you out tremendously so definitely hit the subscribe button uh hit the like button ring the little notification bell and comment down below but before you go check out these other videos that i did on college and being successful and i will see you guys next time bye for now