Every year scholarships for colleges are left unclaimed. Free money is often not claimed by students simply because of the fact that seniors do not know that money is there.

Many websites have been created to help scholarships get into the spotlight but a large number are still left unnoticed. Even at Kaneland High School, there are different ways to become aware of new scholarships in the community and nationwide.

“It’s all online. On Naviance, it could take you to a link and you can fill out the application right there online, or Naviance will take you to a PDF. This often happens with local scholarships and you can print it out and fill out the application that way,” student services secretary Laura McPhee said.

Many of the scholarships are created on appropriated budgets and therefore the money that is meant for the scholarships must be used only for those scholarships. If the money is not claimed by the date specified for that scholarship, then the money simply rolls into next year’s scholarship.

“What we’ve noticed is a lot of seniors don’t go on Naviance. Senioritis has kicked in, or they think that they are not eligible for them, but in fact they probably are,” McPhee said.

While it can be difficult to locate those scholarships, there are helpful websites that can help.

“There are scholarship search engines, like scholarship.com, Dosomething.org and other sites. These can be very helpful,” McPhee said.