Scholarships can be an excellent way to reduce the financial burden of college or pay your education fully. Many scholarships are merit-based, meaning they’re offered because of a student’s academic, athletic, creative or leadership talents.

However, being a standout athlete or being at the top of your class are not prerequisites for receiving scholarships. Numerous scholarships are given out according to a student’s financial need, and some can even be relevant to your interests.

Often, some of the best scholarship sources “are in your backyard,” says Angela Warfield, principal consultant and founder of college admissions consulting firm Compass Academics. School counselors as well as local cultural affinity groups, churches, clubs, community foundations and athletic organizations often award scholarships. Targeting these first is a good way to stack scholarship money, experts say.

Having a good time

Going Merry is a well-known website that independent college admissions consultants suggest since it makes scholarship applications easier for students. Students can check their eligibility for scholarships without registering, although it is free to sign up. The website claims that students have won up to $40,000.
In an email, Denard Jones, lead college counselor at college admissions consulting firm Empowerly, stated, “I recommend this for students due to its user-friendly platform, which simplifies the scholarship application process and aggregates numerous scholarship opportunities in one place.” “It offers a time-efficient approach, allowing students to focus more on their studies and extracurricular activities while pursuing valuable merit aid opportunities.”

Scholarships.com

Students can use this website to find scholarships for which they are eligible, set up their matches, and submit applications. According to Kevin Ladd, the chief operating officer and co-creator of Scholarships.com and a former contributor to U.S. News, the freshly revamped website has further streamlined the procedure.According to Ladd, the platform places a high value on user-friendliness, accuracy, and validity.

“It is safe to apply for it if you found it on Scholarships.com,” Ladd responded in an email. “We carefully screen each one to make sure it’s genuine and there are no application fees. To guarantee timeliness and correctness, we review these every day, compare them to the URL that goes with them, verify the deadline and dollar amount, filter, etc., and, if need, contact or call the provider.”

Scholly

The Scholly app may have come to your attention through the television program “Shark Tank,” where founder Christopher Gray discussed how he applied for almost every scholarship he was eligible for and was able to collect $1.3 million in scholarships. He discovered that he was either the lone applicant or one of the few for several of the scholarships he received.

Gray claims he founded Scholly to assist students in locating the $100 million in scholarship funds that go unclaimed annually, according to financial management firm SoFi. The free software, which is currently owned by educational lender Sallie Mae, assists students in finding scholarships by using their demographics and academic background.

According to Gray, “many students are taking on way more debt than they need to.” “That’s primarily because they are unaware that these scholarships are available.”

Quickweb

Another free resource for finding scholarships is Fastweb, which says it has a database of 1.5 million college scholarships valued at over $3.4 billion. Fastweb, which is owned by Monster.com, provides financial aid information and resources for college planning.

BigFuture

BigFuture, a portal developed by the College Board, enables students to look for scholarships and receive financial aid for their education. According to the website, it has a database of over 24,000 scholarships that give out over $1.5 billion a year. Students can use the website to build a profile and find scholarships for which they are eligible.

“I recommend it to high schools because it offers a reliable tool for accessing essential information on both self-help and gift aid search processes,” Jones states.

RaiseMe

Although RaiseMe advertises scholarships for kids as early as their freshman year, the majority of scholarships are given to high school seniors. RaiseMe describes micro-scholarships as “a small grant that you can earn during high school or community college and put towards tuition at a four-year college or university.” The website matches students with these scholarships.
In addition to entering their grades, interests, honors, awards, community service, and other accomplishments, students are required to establish a profile on the website. After that, they could be able to get paid by one of the 300 institutions that RaiseMe has partnerships with.

According to the website, students who utilize RaiseMe and fulfill the typical college eligibility standards typically get $25,000 in micro-scholarships across their four years of high school.

Appily

Appily, formerly known as Cappex, is another free tool that lets students look for schools and scholarships that fit their demographics and personal profiles. After completing a brief questionnaire, the website filters schools and scholarships that might be relevant, and you can search for scholarships based on your school year.

A niche

Students can read student evaluations on Niche.com to get a feel for a school’s “personality” in addition to looking for scholarships, according to Hartley. Like other services, Niche offers essay-free scholarships, which some students might prefer, and links them with scholarships that fit their credentials.

Unigo

Another service that matches students with scholarships based on their profile is Unigo. In addition to 650,000 college ratings, statistics, and other information to use while evaluating colleges, the website’s database has over 3.6 million athletic, merit-based, and company-sponsored scholarships and grants.

Some applications just take a few minutes to complete, and users can search for new scholarships that match their profile every month.

Scholarships360

In 2010, brothers Will and Brian Geiger founded Scholarships360 to assist students in obtaining college funding after they had difficulty finding scholarships on their own. Since then, the website has provided an easy-to-apply, essay-free scholarship database with thousands of scholarships that can be sorted by demography and grade.

Will Geiger, the CEO of the company, stated in an email that all scholarships “are now ‘ungated’ so that students don’t need to sign up,” which is a new feature of the website. Since students may access the scholarship website directly, we believe that this makes Scholarships360 especially student-centric. Additionally, they can utilize our app to find matches and verify their eligibility.