How to Apply for the Online Student Scholarship

As an online student, your college experience is anything but typical. But Did you know online students have the same opportunities as our on-campus students? In fact, many of Southern Miss’s programs are offered to online students, including scholarships, and as an online student you qualify for a scholarship just for you!. Let’s walk through the steps to apply.

The first thing you’ll need to do is fill out the general application on the scholarship page. So when you’re ready to get started, head over to the Golden Opportunities scholarship page. When you do, you’ll click “Sign In” at the top right. Use your Campus ID and your SOAR password to login. Once here, if you need to fill out the General Application, you’ll see a yellow dot next to the general application status on the left hand side of the page. On the right hand side of the page, you’ll see the general application. You’ll need to fill this out before getting started with any specific scholarship applications like the Online Student Scholarship.

Above the application you should see a list of important deadlines regarding financial aid. Be sure you keep up with these so you have no issues when it comes to getting your scholarships and other financial aid processed on time. Major University deadlines for the academic year are as follows:

• December 1 | Admissions deadline for incoming fall freshman academic, designation-based and competitive scholarships.
• December 15 | FAFSA (Financial Aid Application) priority date for scholarship consideration
• January 15 | Freshman Competitive Programs Applications deadline
• February 15 | Priority date for the GO System General Application
• July 1 | Majority of scholarships offered to students in GO and ready for students to accept and complete post-acceptance.

Once you’ve completed the General Application, you can then search for other opportunities. To do this you won’t even have to leave the page. At the top of the page you see two tabs. After logging in to the platform, you’ll be under the first tab labeled “My Applications”. To find new scholarships to apply for, you can click the “Opportunities” tab.

In the Opportunities tab, you’ll first see another list of deadlines, and then you’ll see a step by step guide to finding new financial aid opportunities. But to make this process simple for you, we’ll go over it here as well. 

• Step 1: Scroll to the middle of the page, and find the search bar. You’ll see the search bar under the list of additional resources.
  Note: If you’ve filled out the General Application, you’ll see a list of automatically matched scholarships populated below the search bar.
• Step 2: Search for “Online Student Scholarship.” You’ll find two versions of the application. If you’re an undergrad student, you’ll fill out the Undergrad version of the application. And if you’re a graduate student, you’ll fill out the Graduate version. 
• Step 3: Once you’ve filled out the application, check your USM email address for University scholarship offers and instructions on how to accept them.
• Step 4: If you are offered a scholarship, log into the Golden Opportunities page again, and accept the scholarship. After you accept, be sure to complete any additional post-acceptance steps.

You can use this process to find and complete other scholarship applications for which you qualify. Be sure to check back regularly for any other financial aid opportunities as you complete your college education. And if you need help applying to Southern Miss, or any other questions, feel free to reach out to us. Just give us your name and contact info at the bottom of this page and we’ll connect with you!

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