Scholarships are awarded separately from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The general freshman scholarships awarded through UWSP's Admissions Office are based on merit, not financial need. There is not a separate application for the freshman scholarships offered through the Admissions Office. Once students are admitted to UWSP, they are considered for all available scholarships using information provided in their admission application (e.g. transcripts, letters of recommendation).

Some academic departments also have scholarship money available, both for new freshmen and continuing students in their second, third and fourth years of college. Students are encouraged to contact the department of their intended major to explore these additional scholarship possibilities.

UWSP is pleased to offer you direct access to the Student Services, Inc. FastWeb scholarship search program via the Internet at no cost. This excellent service is provided free of charge to the students across the nation by a number of FastWeb sponsors. After you input your personal information, a search will be provided in the Fastweb database which has over 1,000,000 scholarships listed in their database. You will be given a list of scholarship sources to which you may write for a scholarship application. Take the time to contact all the sponsors listed, and you might just land yourself one. The Student Services Company will maintain a mailbox for you. Since their database is continually expanding, new matches are made all the time and added to your mailbox. Revisit the mailbox every so often to see if anything has been added. If you provide an E-mail address, Fastweb will even send you a notice when a new scholarship match is made. This is an excellent service.

During the search, there will be an opportunity to link up with these sponsors to learn more about their products and services which have many impressive materials for you to view. There is, of course, no obligation to make any kind of purchase.

Beware of scholarship search scams where you may be asked to pay a fee or provide a credit card or checking account number to be provided with a list of scholarships. Don't be enticed by claims that there are guaranteed results and that you will "get your money back" if you fail to land a scholarship. Any money you spend on these searches will be lost forever whether you get a scholarship or not. There is no need to pay a lot of money to search for a scholarship. Reputable companies will do it for free. Also, avoid any offers to pay your college bills if you submit an initialization fee, these are always going to be scams that will end up losing you money. There are a few other free scholarship search services available, but we are less certain of their reliability and database extensiveness, currency, or if they screen out fee-based scams which would cause you to lose money. For these reasons we no longer offer links to alternative searches.