Louisville-based KFC announced a few weeks ago that it was offering a scholarship for the person who could state why they were deserving of the Colonel’s Scholars scholarship in just a single tweet—this includes explaining how the applicant plans to enrich their communities and how they exemplify Colonel Sanders’ commitment to education.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Foundation oversees the KFC Colonel’s Scholars program. While the foundation awards more than 75 college scholarships each year, this scholarship is the first to be awarded based on a single tweet.

In order to be considered all applicants had to follow KFC on Twitter (@KFC_Colonel) and then submit their tweet using the hashtag #KFCScholar.

All tweets were judged on creativity and quality. Only one entry per twitter account was accepted.

Some real example tweets from contestants included the following:

“#KFCscholar. College is expensive. W/o help, I can’t afford more chicken! I want to make it big, rockin’ my dreams @ U of Kentucky! Help me! ”

“My mind is constantly creating things my body and knowledge aren’t capable of. I want to have the power to create and discover. #kfcscholar”

“Im just 1 in a Million, bt can i be that 1 chicken leg in that bucket, plz #KFCScholar, Student loans r gona eat me, LiKE i eat ur chicken”

“#KFCScholar. We’re molded throughout elementary and secondary schooling. College is where we learn to become exceptional & educated citizens”

On December 1^st, KFC announced the winner! A California high school senior turned a single tweet into a college scholarship.

The Twitter entry from 17-year-old Amanda Russell was selected from more than 2,800 tweets that competed for the scholarship offered by a foundation for the Louisville-based KFC restaurant chain.

Russell reached the 140 character limit for the contest, so she’ll get $142 per character to pursue her college dreams.

The winning tweet refers to the chain’s late founder Colonel Harland Sanders and says:

“Hey Colonel! Your scholarship’s the secret ingredient missing from my recipe for success! Got the grades, drive, just need cash!”

Russell has compiled a 3.9 grade point average at her Long Beach high school. She says she plans to major in biology and pursue a career as a doctor or medical researcher.

Look for these scholarship gems and you too could net some cold, hard college cash!

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This guest post is contributed by Kate Willson, who writes on the topics of best online colleges.  She welcomes your comments at her email: katewillson2@gmail.com.

Here are the rules:

• Submit original artwork, computer graphic or photo for the front of a greeting card.
• Submissions accepted from March 17, 2010-January 15, 2011
• Monthly winners will receive a $75 Amazon gift card
• Must be 14 years or older and enrolled in high school or college

Check out the past winners and applicants for a good idea of how the contest is judged.

Here’s the official Scholarship page link:

The 4th Annual Create-A-Greeting Card Scholarship

Where’s FRANKIE the Diploma Frame? Scholarship Photo Contest

Take FRANKIE the Diploma Frame on a summer adventure, and he could earn you $500 to help pay for textbooks for the 2010-2011 academic year! At Church Hill Classics, we are looking for the most creative and fun-themed photos of our mascot, FRANKIE the Diploma Frame.

All you need to do is print and cut out a copy of FRANKIE, available on our diplomaframe.com website, and take a photo of (or with) him. Take FRANKIE to the beach, have him play sports, or make him the life of a party. You can submit any photo, as long as a cutout of FRANKIE is included.

Take a look at submitted entries as well as an overview of where in the world FRANKIE has visited so far!

This scholarship is open to students attending college full-time for the 2010-2011 academic year. Family members can also enter if they have a student attending college full-time for the 2010-2011 academic year.

• Moms and dads, enter to win the money for your son or daughter in college
• Brothers and sisters, enter for your siblings
• Aunts and uncles, enter for your nieces and nephews
• Sons and daughters, enter for a parent returning to school!

Entrants need to be a legal US resident and 18 years or older.

We’ll select six Finalists to be posted on our website, and two weeks of public voting will determine our $500 Winner!

This deadline is coming up fast…entries need to be submitted through our website’s online entry form before Friday, August 13, 2010 (10 am ET), so print out FRANKIE, and snap your favorite photo of him! Visit the contest page at http://www.diplomaframe.com/FRANKIE.cfm for full details.

“Frame My Future” Scholarship Contest 2011

Coming up soon is our 3^rd annual “Frame My Future” Scholarship Contest, where we award $6,000 in scholarships! Five students each receive a $1,000 scholarship, and one student also earns a $1,000 donation to their college or university’s scholarship endowment fund!

The best part is that it provides an opportunity for students to be creative! To enter, you submit an original creation that shares with us how you frame your future and what you want to achieve in your personal and professional life after college.  The main guideline is that your creation must be submitted within one image. Entries range from photographs and collages, to fine art and graphic design pieces, to poems and written submissions.

Check out our 2010 Winners and Finalists!

This scholarship will open for entry on October 7, 2010, and is available to students who will be attending college full-time for the 2011-2012 academic year.  Sign up to receive more details as the contest start date approaches: http://www.diplomaframe.com/ScholarshipInformation.cfm

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This guest post was provided by Jessica Joram, Marketing Assistant at Church Hill Classics. Church Hill Classics is a leading U.S. manufacturer of custom diploma frames, certificate frames, and photo frames, as well as a line of desk accessories for thousands of institutions of higher education, the military, professional associations, and corporate clients.

• A google search of “bass fishing scholarships” reels in 45,000 matches.
• There are 220 colleges with bass fishing scholarships

Take Bethel College in McKenzie, Tennessee, for instance. Their bass team was featured in The New York Times just  two weeks ago. Bethel made Lauren Stamps the first woman bass angler ever to be awarded a college scholarship for bass fishing. Tyler Wadzinski, a senior at Franklin (Tenn.) High School, was awarded a $4,000 ride to fish for the Bethel Wildcats. Wondering about Bethel College’s academic reputation?  It was founded in 1842; has 2,700 students; offers 28 undergraduate programs and five Masters. Their athletic program includes 16 men’s and 13 women’s sports (NAIA). In addition to their home campus in McKenzie, they have five satellite campuses in Tennessee.

Not convinced? Look at just some of the top colleges with bass clubs — Duke, Cornell, Northwestern and Texas A&M. If you’re looking for a complete list, go online to www.collegebass.com. Odds are you might be surprised by some of the colleges listed that have bass fishing teams and scholarships.

Remember, sports are not just “stick and ball” anymore. If student-athletes can win scholarships for skiing, shooting and tumbling, why not bass fishing? It may not be for everyone, but if your child is  interested, put them on a scholarship track now by suggesting that they investigate this new financial boon.

I’m always on the lookout for scholarship opportunities for college-bound teens. And when I find one that doesn’t require an essay, I’m ecstatic. Why? Because there is always that student out there that is loaded with creativity, but not the best wordsmith.

Frame My Future Scholarship, sponsored by Church Hill Classics, asks applicants to “upload an original creation that shares with us what you want to achieve in your personal and professional life after college.  The main guideline is that your creation must be submitted within one image, in a JPEG format.” This allows for creativity to abound because images can be photographs, collages, a scrapbook page, a poem–just as long as it’s a single JPEG image that can be uploaded.

This year’s scholarship contest is coming to a close, but there’s a link on their site to VOTE for one of the top 24 finalists (give these creative college-bound teens some votes) AND a link to  sign up to receive information on next year’s scholarship. What could be simpler?

As always, I recommend you keep a scholarship file (either online or in a folder) with all your scholarship finds so that when the time arises to apply, you won’t forget about a single one!

Kudos to Church Hill Classics for coming up with this unique scholarship!

Stuck at Prom participants are required to submit a photo of themselves attending their prom decked out in duct tape anytime from March 1 to June 7, 2010. Check out the website for complete rules, details and photos of past winners.

JoAnn’s, Own Your Look Prom Contest began on January 15 and ends June 15, 2010. This contest requires an original prom dress (using a pattern is okay!) and accessory made with fabrics and other items from JoAnn’s. The student/prom goer (aged 14-19) entering the contest must be the one making the entry. Photos of the contestant in the dress are required.

Click the links below for full contest rules and details:

Own Your Look Prom Contest 2010

Stuck at Prom

Ford Motor Company has launched a new scholarship contest on Monday, March 15. Modeled after Ford’s own standard of giving back to the communities in which it works, the two-part scholarship contest is open to high school seniors and current college students enrolled in an accredited U.S. college or university by September 30, 2010.

The contest asks a simple question: what is your heart behind? Ford Motor Company wants to hear what students are doing to make a positive impact in their communities. The first place winner will receive a $3000 scholarship, second place a $2000 scholarship and third place a $1000 scholarship.

Essays will be accepted from March 15 to April 9, 2010 online at www.fordscholars.org. From there, ten semi-finalists will be selected to win an ULTRA HD FLIP Cam for their outstanding efforts. The semi-finalists will then use their new FLIP Cam to produce a 3-minute video illustrating their essay. The videos will be posted to www.fordscholars.org for public voting May 10-14, 2010. The public votes combined with the judging panel will determine the scholarship winners.

Winners will be announced on May 17, 2010.

- 1 will be a high school genius
- 1 will be a college/grad school genius
- And the 3rd winner will be whomever has the most “likes” to their post when the judging occurs.

According to the rules:

You can post either an image or video that displays how creative you are. This could be a film you made, a piece of your artwork, some of your photography, etc., or it could be a photograph of something that you made, did, or otherwise. Or you can just make a video telling us why you are a creative genius.

You can pretty much do whatever you want as long as it is in video or picture format and reflects your creative genius.

The deadline is Monday, November 30th.

You can get all the details by clicking below:
Thanksgiving Creative Geniuses Scholarship sponsored by Zinch.com

Is your teen a leftie?

Juniata College located in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania offers two 1,000 scholarhips to left handed students each year. One of the qualifications is – yes – left handedness.

Does your teen know how to knit?

The National Make It Yourself with Wool (NMIYWW) organization awards 2 scholarships for knitting wool garments. Make a killer wool garment and submit it to this organization and they will judge it based garment style and design, contestant’s presentation, and creativity. Winners receive either a $2,000 or a $1,000 scholarship.

Is your teen a Trekkie?

The Kor Memorial Scholarship is awarded by the Klingon Language Institute to recognize and encourage scholarship in the field of language study. You don’t have to be fluent in Klingon, but creativity is preferred.

And…

Starfleet Academy Scholarship. If you are a member of the “Starfleet Academy,” an organization modeled after the fictitious Star Trek academy you may qualify for awards such as the Gene Roddenberry Memorial Scholarship for Aspiring Writers or the DeForest Kelley/Dr. Leonard McCoy Medical Scholarship.

Is your teen enjoying “the air up there”?

The Kae Sumner Einfeldt Scholarship, sponsored by Tall Clubs International offers tall students a $1000.00 scholarship. To qualify, girls must be at least 5-foot-10, and guys must measure at least 6-foot-2.

Is your teen fascinated with ghosts?

The New York-based Parapsychology Foundation offers young ghost hunters and those with interest in the paranormal several scholarships.

Does your teen have expertise in duck calling?

The Chick and Sophie Major Memorial Duck Calling Contest awards a $1,500 scholarship to the winner of their duck calling contest. First runner-up gets $500, second runner-up gets $300, and third runner-up gets $200.

If these have peeked your interest, here’s a few other links offering many other possibilities. With the scholarship names, you can go to a scholarship search site like FastWeb and find out all the details.

http://scholarship.lifetips.com/cat/61637/wacky-scholarships/index.html

http://www.wacky-scholarships.com/

Happy Halloween!

FIRE’s Freedom in Academia Essay Contest

2009 Awards
One first place winner will be awarded a $5,000 college scholarship.
Two second place winners will each receive a $2,500 college scholarship.
Five runners-up will each receive a $1000 college scholarship.

Deadlines
The final day to submit an entry is November 6, 2009. The winners will be announced on December 11, 2009.

FIRE’s Mission
FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience?the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.

Click here for all the scholarship details!