You want to earn a college degree, but it's going to take a lot of money. Maybe you have to foot the bill yourself, or maybe you want to ease your parents' financial burden. Perhaps you're a leader who takes pride in paying your own way.

The Miss America Organization is the leading provider of scholarships for young women in the world. Each year, more than $40 million in cash and tuition scholarship assistance is made available to the young women who compete in the system. This assistance is not just for the handful of young women who become Miss America, but is available to the over 12,000 young women who compete in the state and local competitions as well.

Today, the Miss America Organization is one of the nation's leading achievement programs as well as the world's largest provider of scholarship assistance for young women. Rich in history and social significance, the Miss America Organization is a not-for-profit organization that has maintained a tradition for many decades of empowering young women to achieve their personal and professional goals, while providing a forum in which to express their opinions, talent and intelligence. Scholarships have been the cornerstone of the Miss America program since 1945 when Bess Myerson was the first Miss America to receive a scholarship from the Organization.

Participating in the Miss America system not only helps you pay for college and prepare for a career, it also provides an opportunity to gain additional life experience, working on issues of importance to society, enhancing your personal and professional skills and developing your performance-related and other talents.

Did you know?

Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, a young woman from the small town of Monroe, Michigan, entered a Miss America local competition to earn scholarship money to pay her nursing school bills. To her surprise, she captured not only a local and state title, but was ultimately named Miss America 1988. Kaye Lani used the scholarship money she earned as Miss America to pursue an advanced degree and fulfill her dream of opening a hospice for the terminally ill in her hometown.