Scholarship Engines

If you type “scholarship” into any internet search engine, millions of results will pop back at you. While you could choose to explore each option individually, it’s more practical (in terms of productivity and efficiency) to utilize a couple of the larger search engines – and you can also avoid scams this way. I recommend at least joining both Fastweb and Zinch, and it stands true to reason that the more services you join, the more eligible matches you’ll receive.

FastWeb: The One You Must Join

FastWeb One of the best-known and distinguished search engines for scholarships is FastWeb. Very easy to use, Fastweb allows you to mark your favorite scholarships and highlights new scholarships as they come in. Fastweb also has a helpful calendar feature that orders your scholarship matches by deadline. All scholarship matches are based off of a profile that you specify, with options for interested colleges, majors, careers, activities, etc. as well as various information regarding parents, work history, and such.

Not only is Fastweb a scholarship search site, however, but it also shows, along with various scholarship matches, grant and contest matches (with an indicator next to each title as to which type of opportunity it is). Fastweb also has a Jobs & Interships search engine, and gives matches based off the same profile as its scholarship matches. And throughout the website are various articles and activities, some merely for interest, and some with very pertinent information, advice, warnings, etc. about college and cash.

Zinch: The New Guy In Town

Zinch Another good search service to sign up with is Zinch, which is both a college and a scholarship search service. They can match with colleges according to your selected preferences, as well as scholarships based off of your profile – which is similar to, though more comprehensive and self-directed than that of Fastweb.

Some benefits specific to Zinch include the fact that Zinch itself offers a couple of scholarships to its members, and the Zinch scholarships appear on many of the other scholarship search engines. Zinch also has an interesting program that if you find a scholarship on Zinch.com, apply, and win it, Zinch will match that scholarship. Also, if you refer a friend to Zinch, and he/she wins a scholarship, you get to “mooch” off his/her success, and Zinch will give you the same amount that it gives your friend.

Basically, Fastweb is a great everything search, which is said to be updated most frequently of all the currently running search engines, and Zinch is a great opportunity to increase your winnings with any singular scholarship, as well as a good community to get involved in and share with.

Other Scholarship Resources

A great guide to financing college is the FinAid website. Not only does it have a good list of other Free Scholarship Search Sites, as well as a page dedicated to various Unusual Scholarships, but FinAid also offers a lot of information regarding loans, grants, military aid, government aid, and general fiscal tactics for saving money.

The most helpful part of FinAid is perhaps not its explanations (though they can be very beneficial) but the vast accumulation of resources that can be accessed through FinAid. For almost every topic it touches upon, FinAid offers a page of annotated links, so that any interested parties may find more information at their disposal.

Another good resource is the Students.gov website. This can pretty much be considered an end-all resource for government aid. Like FinAid, the primary benefit of this site lies in its collection of links to other government pages which detail the specifics of the various offered opportunities.

Also, because the site is directly connected to the government (hence the .gov), you know that you can trust any and all of the links given to be legitimate chances to gain back some of you, your parents’, and your neighbors’ hard-earned tax dollars.

Some other comprehensive lists of scholarship search sites include the Internet Guide on the Scholarship Help site. The Scholarship Help site also includes pages with advice about how to write the essay, get letters of recommendation, etc. College-Scholarships.com also has a page of free scholarship searches for those with the time and willingness to explore every possible horizon for possible scholarships.

Even with these all together, it is unlikely that you’ll truly have a comprehensive list of ALL the scholarships you could possibly qualify for, but you will probably have a sufficient amount to go to the next step: APPLYING.