Recommendations:  Ask early!  Respect their time & effort.  Give your recommender plenty of ADVANCED notice, not less than a week.

Essays:  Start an electronic scholarship file.  Once you have spent the time writing a great essay, you may only need to do minor changes to have it work for another scholarship prompt.

Scholarship Searches:  Keep in mind these are National....the lotter if you will.  Give them a try, but don't let them "burn you out".