A surprising number of students fail to see that identifying scholarships can be one of the most important parts of the successful scholarship search. There are thousands and thousands of scholarships available to students through internet searches and scholarship guides, but no one student will every qualify for all of them. Even if one person were to qualify for all of them, though, most students at UC Berkeley probably don't have the time to apply for each and every one. For this reason, a well-defined scholarship search can be invaluable to students looking for some extra money to fund their education, research proposal, or community service project.
The best and cheapest way to run a scholarship search is to find a good, reliable scholarship search engine (like the Scholarship Connection scholarship database.) Internet searches are free (or they should be!), and unlike scholarship guides that simply list awards, even when they are sorted by subject matter, the internet can help you filter out awards for which you simply don't qualify (the scholarship connection does maintain a list of free on-line search engines.) This means finding scholarships that are best suited to who you are, both as a student and as a person.