Scholarships represent a nearly free source of financial aid. The monetary support granted through scholarships can be directly allocated to cover your tuition and various college-related costs. The best part is that scholarships do not require repayment, thereby helping you finance your education without accumulating significant student debt.
However, despite recognizing the value of scholarships, it can be a challenging task to locate them. To assist you in your quest for scholarships that align with your skills and passions, here are some valuable resources that can give you a head start in securing funds for your education.
What the Top Scholarship Websites Provide
Leading scholarship search engines offer an extensive range of scholarships, encompassing niche awards, sweepstakes, and prominent national prizes. Most of these platforms also enable you to establish a profile where you can save scholarship applications for future reference or receive alerts when a scholarship matching your qualifications becomes available.
These scholarship websites should additionally offer tools for filtering awards based on specific criteria, such as your location, grade point average (GPA), or ethnicity. The ability to narrow down scholarships is critical for success, as it enhances your chances of securing awards that align with your unique skills and interests.
Top 9 Scholarship Websites to Streamline Your Search
We've assessed prominent scholarship websites and evaluated them based on features such as search and sorting capabilities, profile management, user-friendliness, and supplementary functionalities like auto-match. Here are the standout scholarship websites that can help you identify awards for which you qualify:
1-Scholarships.com
Scholarships.com categorizes scholarships under various distinctive headings, including GPA, military connections, ethnicity, artistic talents, ACT or SAT scores, and your state of residence. Within these categories, you'll find numerous subcategories that display all eligible scholarships. This system aids students in discovering niche awards with smaller applicant pools, increasing their chances of success.
2-Fastweb
Fastweb aggregates scholarships from both extensive and niche directories. To initiate your scholarship search, you'll need to create a profile, a common requirement on similar sites. However, after the initial setup, you can easily explore scholarships and refine your search based on a variety of data points. Fastweb also offers notification services for new scholarships that match your profile and impending deadlines.
3-College Board
If you've taken standardized tests like the SAT or AP exams, you're likely familiar with the College Board. This organization can assist you in finding scholarships to support your college education after you've been accepted. Creating an account allows you to filter awards based on your interests, field of study, club affiliations, or specific circumstances, such as parental divorce. College Board's automatic matching feature aligns you with relevant scholarships, based on the information in your profile. Moreover, the autofill function facilitates reusing data from other scholarship applications, saving you time and expanding your application possibilities.
4-Going Merry
Going Merry streamlines the scholarship application process by allowing students to input information once and apply for multiple scholarships simultaneously. If you're pressed for time, consider searching for awards on Going Merry before exploring other major scholarship websites. The platform also emphasizes local awards, which tend to be less competitive and offer a higher likelihood of success compared to major national scholarships.
5-ScholarshipOwl
ScholarshipOwl is a popular scholarship website that compiles awards and organizes them according to criteria like award amount, requirements, number of winners, and application deadlines. ScholarshipOwl also offers the convenience of automatically resubmitting your application for recurring scholarships that require only basic information, enabling you to focus on awards that demand essays and recommendation letters.
6-Bold.org
Among the scholarship websites, Bold.org stands out with its user-friendly interface. You can easily search for scholarships you qualify for and apply filters based on your education level, award category, award amount, and application deadline. Furthermore, you can toggle the "no-essay" option to identify scholarships that don't mandate written essays.
7-Cappex
Cappex claims to host the largest online scholarship database, making it worthwhile to explore the site for potential scholarship opportunities. Like other platforms, you'll need to create an account to access a comprehensive list of scholarships for which you may be eligible. Cappex's filtering system allows you to sort scholarships by academic year, award value, gender, ethnicity, and application deadlines. Additionally, you can search for renewable scholarships that offer funding throughout your college years.
8-Scholly
Scholly employs an algorithm that scours available scholarships and generates a list of eligible awards after you complete your profile. Each scholarship is assigned a Scholly score, which rates the compatibility of your background and experience with the scholarship's criteria. A higher Scholly score indicates a stronger alignment with the scholarship's requirements.
9-CareerOneStop
The U.S. Department of Labor offers its own scholarship website through the CareerOneStop portal, featuring a comprehensive list of over 8,000 scholarships. This platform allows you to filter awards using keywords and sort them by award amount, application deadline, state of residence, and state of study. Scholarships are available for students pursuing vocational training, associate's degrees, undergraduate and graduate degrees, encompassing a wide range of educational paths.