Friday, June 29th, 2007...3:33 am
College Scholarship Search Engines
Chances are, if you are planning to attend college you (or your parents) will not be paying for it completely out of pocket!
With that being said, you are more than likely going to have to look for scholarships to help cover the costs of higher education.
If you’ve never researched scholarship opportunities before, it’s no surprise that you may be a little confused about where to begin.
I recommend reading my previous article on avoiding scholarship scams before you begin your scholarship search.
That way, you know what to avoid while researching for opportunities. Once you feel comfortable looking up scholarships, it’s time to figure out where a few of the best scholarship opportunities can be found.
While there are undoubtedly several places to search for scholarships within your community and elsewhere, the sheer number of scholarship search engines make researching opportunities online the easiest and fastest way to find what you’re looking for.
The following search engines are some of the most popular ways to find college scholarships online. Not only do they have a vast number of opportunities to choose from, but these search engines make finding scholarships you are eligible for very simple and user-friendly.
No matter what you plan to major in or which school you are attending, the following search engines are a few of the best online portals for scholarship opportunities.
Easily the largest and most popular scholarship search engine on the internet, Fastweb.com boasts a huge database of opportunities for every prospective or current college student.
Student must register for the website before they can search for scholarship opportunities, and the search engine will customize your results based on the information you enter when you register.
For example, if you enter what you are majoring in/plan to major in, Fastweb will not only locate generic scholarships for you, but will search for scholarships that you might be eligible for based on your course of study.
Not only can you find many scholarship opportunities here, but you can also search for colleges, internships, jobs and other resources to help make finding money for college as simple as possible.
If you don’t look anywhere else, I strongly encourage you check out Fastweb.com. Their website is user friendly; they have a huge database of scholarships, and you can find other sources of funding to help pay for your college education.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for on Fastweb, Scholarships.com offers another great database of scholarship opportunities to research.
Like Fastweb, you do have to register to use the website. Once you sign up, you are taken to your scholarship search results, which you can easily navigate through to decide which ones you’d like to pursue.
You can easily add scholarships to your “My Favorites” category by checking the box next to each scholarship you believe you stand the best chance of winning. This allows you to easily keep track of the scholarships you’ve already applied for or would like to look into further.
While not as extensive as Fastweb, they are easily the second best search engine for scholarship opportunities. You can even expand your search results by changing the year of need at the top of the screen (i.e., college freshman, college sophomore, etc.).
An inventive scholarship search engine with a talking monkey… seriously. Signing up for their search engine is quick and easy, and from what I’ve noticed they tend to find scholarships that are a little different from what the major search engines pick up.
Their website is streamlined for simplicity, but don’t expect to find hoards of opportunities here. However, you will probably find a few unique scholarships that don’t appear on FastWeb or Scholarships.com.
I’m not exactly sure what purpose the talking monkey really serves, but regardless this site is definitely worth checking out. Parents can even use this search engine to search for scholarships for their children (there’s a handy little checkbox during signup that lets you tell Scholarship-Monkey you’re a parent.)
While this website doesn’t have as many fancy features as some of the more popular scholarship search engines, it’s good as a basic search engine to find scholarships you might not have discovered through the other databases.
The only real downside to this website is the sign up process, which can be a bit tedious. However, they have a lot of unique scholarship opportunities that cater to all mediums (poetry and creative writing, to name a couple.)
Even if you don’t apply to the bulk of your scholarships here, it’s worth a look to see what other databases may have missed.
The bonus? Most of the scholarships have online applications, which can be easily viewed by clicking the link next to the scholarship name. Simple, isn’t it?
This scholarship search engine seems to offer quite a bit of features. Not only can you search by scholarship title, but the website also allows you to search for opportunities based on family heritage, location, religion, affiliations and extracurricular activities.
There are also scores of helpful articles regarding everything from financial aid to scholarship scams, which are invaluable for any prospective college student.
Combine the wealth of information with the site’s easy navigation and user-friendly features, and College Toolkit should be added to your favorites immediately. Even if you don’t find any opportunities you are eligible for, the extra resources make this site well worth it.
As you can see, there are many scholarship search engines available on the web for both prospective and current college students.
Even if you’ve never searched for scholarship opportunities online before, the above databases make finding opportunities you are eligible for an absolute breeze.
Each of these search engines offers different features, and they all have their pros and cons depending on what you are looking for. Try them out and see what opportunities arise.
You never know what you might find!
Leave a Reply