The Starfleet Academy Scholarship
Requirements: An enthusiasm for Star Trek and Starfleet membership
Amount: $500
How to Apply: Applications for the 2012-2013 school year will be available as of Jan. 1, 2012, at Scholarship.sfi.org.
Your extracurricular activities, even if they're unusual, can pay off. Just ask members of Starfleet Academy -- a nonprofit Star Trek fan group -- who have won college bucks for their love of the franchise. Starfleet currently offers 10 scholarships ranging from the Leonard McCoy/DeForrest Kelley Memorial Medical Scholarship to the LeVar Burton Educational Scholarship, but you have to be a member for at least one year before applying.
Whatever your extracurricular interests happen to be, there's probably an award offered in that area. When applying for scholarships given for a particular talent or interest, candidates can sweeten their application packet by highlighting specific achievements they've made in that field, says Zoya Zaitseva, manager of the QS scholarship fund and global operations manager of the QS World MBA Tour, an international series of MBA educational fairs.
"If there's some sort of research that they've done in that particular area or a project they've completed, talk about that," she says. " ... It's better than just including generic stuff about your background."