How to find scholarships to pay for college

Posted on January 20th, 2014

When applying for college, it can be overwhelming to figure out how you’re going to afford a 4-year degree.

One of the best things you can do to help pay for college is to be diligent in your search for grants and scholarships.

Scholarship search engines make it much easier and faster to find scholarships than general search engines. It’s much simpler to sort through these sites than simply typing “scholarships” into Google.

Check out these top scholarship search engines that make it easier to find free money for college.

 College scholarship search engines

1. Zinch: Zinch offers more than $1 billion in scholarships. You can also create a free profile and be recruited by hundreds of colleges and universities around the world. They try to make the scholarship search a little less painful by connecting you other students who are going through the same struggles of applying.

2. ScholarshipExperts: Unlike many scholarship websites, ScholarshipExperts has team of research specialists who regularly collect, add, and revise records in the scholarship database to keep it up to date. The award database currently contains over 2.4 million scholarships worth more than $14 billion, so chances are you’ll find something you’re eligible for.

3. FindTuition.com: With a database of more than 1.7 million scholarships worth $7 billion, FindTutition.com is a great place to search and apply for scholarships. The site also offers college application tracking, scholarship deadline reminders and information on other types of financial aid and loan consolidation.

4. Peterson’s: Peterson’s offers free online test prep, school searches and career tools, as well as a database of scholarships from 5,000 providers worth over $1.5 million. And since you don’t have to create a profile to use the search (you do with the other three websites), you can find scholarships in seconds.

Applying for scholarships is worth it

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all of the applications and choices.

This video from The College Board explains why it’s important not to get discouraged when searching for scholarships. Money is out there–you just have to find it!

Tips on finding and winning scholarships

Whether you’re attending college next year or already enrolled, you should apply for as many scholarships as you can to help minimize your student debt.  Though finding and applying for scholarships takes time, putting in the work now will pay off in the long run.

For more scholarship information, be sure to check out our other posts on finding scholarships for college:


Category: Scholarships

Tags: , , , , , , ,