As the new school year begins, junior and senior students begin to look into scholarships that will help them through-out their college years. Universities, organizations and several other companies are now using Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging site, as a way to offer scholarships to high school students.

The University of Iowa offers a full scholarship worth around $37,000 to a few lucky high school seniors who give the best answer to one of their essay questions. The answer must be in the form of a tweet with a total of 140 characters or less.

Jodi Schafer, University of Iowa’s director of admissions and financial aid, offered students a small tip, stating that students could use links that would lead admission officers to a blog or website where the answer would be better-rounded.

“It's really good for the universities to find many ways to help out students,” said Courtnie Lee, a junior at Everglades Senior High School, “But I also think that it'll be hard to find the right person to give it to.”

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is also rewarding seniors with $20,000 for a single tweet saying why they think they deserve the scholarship.

Many other organizations are joining The University of Iowa and KFC in scholarships through twitter. The 140 scholarship, which is sponsored by College Scholarships.org, offers a prize of $1,400 to a select few who best answer the following question: how can Twitter make the world a better place?

Awards and scholarships are also being given to college students. Scholarships.com is provides a program called “Short and Tweet” which asks students to sum up their college experience into a tweet to win $1,000 or a Kindle.

For students like Josue Romero, a senior in the Health Academy, Twitter opens doors to those who are more familiar with social networking sites and makes it accessible to those who wouldn’t know about the various opportunities available to them. Twitter is a gateway to universities and organizations that encourage the education of young teens.

“Having scholarships reach out to us through a social network medium such as Twitter offers many students a greater opportunity to get ‘free money.’ It also becomes more accessible that way,” Romero said.