Most of the seniors of Dimond High School have been working very hard for the last four years of their schooling career so they can move forth to college or a secondary school.

Dimond Counselor Peter Mandel said that he helps students “by pointing them in the right direction for getting scholarships.” The best way to get scholarships is to, “start young to get a better chance.”

Mandel said the best ones to apply for are the Alaska Performance Scholarship, Western Undergraduate Exchange program (WUE), and “any other ones that students can qualify for.”

Multiple seniors around Dimond have signed up for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, (FAFSA), to “help them get scholarships from the government,” said Nick Johansen, a Senior at Dimond High.

Although Johansen has not signed up for the FAFSA quite yet, he has gotten some scholarship opportunities from other sources.

Johansen said that he used “Unigov. com,” and wrote out “about six” essays for the multiple scholarships they offer.

Johansen said that college is “really freaking expensive.” So he is continuing to fill out more scholarships so he doesn’t have to “pay for much college.”

He said that the best application he has filled out would have to be the American Rental Association, (ARA Foundation) “because so few people can get it.” The reason Johansen can get it, is because his dad owns two businesses; one for renting tents and the other for renting outhouses.

He said he is “quite excited to see the world”  and explore college life outside of Alaska. His top two choices are, Oregon State University and Montana State University.

Johansen has been accepted to both of these colleges.

Another Dimond High senior, Ozair El-Omari, said that he too had filled out multiple applications for scholarships from many different places, online and on paper.

He is “definitely not excited for college” because he knows how “stressful college will be” and that there is going to be a ton of work to do he’s wanting to learn interesting things and helpful things for the nursing program.

Unfortunately, El-Omari said he got “tapped out”, meaning he can not get anymore scholarships, because of the two scholarships he applied for. Just the two alone pay for all of his tuition at the University of Anchorage Alaska with some extra money left over.

El-Omari is not quite sure what to do with the leftover money or what the scholarship committee will do with it, so he’s hoping it can be “pocket change.”

Carña Trujillo, a Dimond High senior, said that signing up for a scholarship is “pretty easy, and doesn’t take much thinking.”

Trujillo is “so pumped for college,” and has signed up for several scholarships, all online.

She had filled out the FAFSA just about a week ago, she said that, the FAFSA and Alaska Performance scholarships were her favorite by far because of how “easy” they were to fill out.

She believes she would be eligible for “a lot more scholarships” and is planning on continuing her scholarship journey.

One last senior Jack Woodke, used multiple websites that found scholarships all over that  he would be  qualified for.

He said he “could get more scholarships” but, that “requires more essays and time,” and sometimes they will only choose a small amount of graduates.

Woodke is planning on attending a foreign school in Japan and is “extremely excited” to move out of Alaska to Japan.

Woodke had actually spent his first semester of senior year in Japan at an only Japanese-speaking school. With the six years of learning the language, he has found that he “enjoys it in Japan,” and the Japanese people are “a lot more interesting” than Americans.

He said that if he does not get accepted into the school in Japan, he “will be moving to Europe and exploring the world there.”