Let’s face the facts—college isn’t cheap! By the time you’re done paying for tuition, books, and food, you barely have enough spare change for your dog’s birthday present. Instead of spending your time paying bills, wouldn’t you rather be out on campus educating people about cruelty to animals? We thought so. For precisely that reason, we’ve compiled a list of scholarship opportunities for you to check out. Finally, you can cash in on all that hard work you’ve been doing!

Note: Some of these are only open to students in the United States, so read the fine print.

• Vegetarian Resource Group Scholarship: This scholarship hooks up soon-to-be college students with thousands of dollars for being outspoken advocates for animals. For more info, click here.
• Brower Youth Awards: Thousands of dollars for advocating environmental and social change? Sweet deal, and it’s a perfect chance to draw connections between the exploitation of animals, the destruction of the environment, and human rights abuses. For more info, click here.
• All Ink Scholarship: If you’re willing to discuss who has been your biggest activist influence and what you hope to accomplish after college for animals, check this one out. For more info, click here.
• Do Something BRICK Awards: Are you working for a better local community by volunteering at the animal shelter, hosting free workshops on the many benefits of veganism, or promoting sustainable agriculture via compassionate eating? If so, click here.
• Udall Foundation Scholarship: If you’re a student leader with a demonstrated commitment to a career in the environment, apply for this one. While members of the selection committee are yawning over a zillion essays on recycling bottles, you can impress them by articulating the ways that animal rights organizing will save the planet. For more info, click here.
• Windstar Foundation Environmental Studies Scholarship: Calling all environmental studies and environmental engineering majors! Check this out and write a quick essay on what you are doing to promote animal rights. Easy! For more info, click here.
• Thomas Pratte Memorial Scholarship: From wasting water through factory farming to polluting waterways with animal waste to depleting the oceans of billions of lives every year, animal exploitation contributes to many of the problems that the Surfrider Foundation works to wipe out. Speak your mind about how you work to protect your waves and our planet through peta2. For more info, click here.
• The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest: This competition is designed to challenge college students to analyze the urgent ethical issues (cough, cough, animal rights) confronting them in today’s complex world. Students are encouraged to write thought-provoking personal essays that raise questions, single out issues, and provide rational arguments regarding ethical action. For more info, click here.
• ‘Take Me Away!’ to College Scholarship: Hey, ladies, this is an opportunity to discuss your evolution from a bratty pre-teen into the dedicated, compassionate young woman you are today. For more info, click here.
• Barbara Wiedner and Dorothy Vandercook Memorial Peace Scholarship: It’s easy to agree that “violence” is one term to describe humans’ treatment of animals who are cut open, crammed into cages, beaten, and torn from their families. It makes sense, then, that a “peaceful” thing to do would be to help stop this cruelty. Write all about it and score some money. For more info, click here.
• aBetterEarth Essay Contest: Do you think that the environmental destruction caused by factory farming or by drug companies passing off harmful chemicals after manipulative animal experiments poses global environmental challenges? We do too. Get your thoughts together and apply. For more info, click here.
• Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund: Students working on progressive issues like animal rights can apply to have their hard work pay off for them and get some extra money to put toward an education. For more info, click here.

Also, keep checking sites like www.findtuition.com, www.scholarships.com, http://www.fastweb.com/, and others for scholarship opportunities. If you find any that you’d like to share or want to brag about one that you won, just drop us a line at College@peta2.com. Good luck!