Searching for Scholarships Without Spam Hell

UPDATED 01/2021

Scholarships, Sharks, & Spam (Oh my!)

There are may excellent websites that help you locate potential scholarships.

Most of them, unfortunately, sell your information to everyone, and their mother, in the scholarship game.  

If you use your “real” email, you can be hit with spam, for years, for everything from scholarships to financing schemes, or worse. So…

1. Get a “scholarship” mailbox at google.com, yahoo.com, etc. that you will use ONLY for scholarships.
2. Sign up for scholarship info and give them a profile of you so they can send you (hopefully) meaningful filter of opportunities and offers.

When To Start

Don’t wait until Fall of your Senior year to start looking. Some scholarships give you up to two years in advance to apply. For the ones that do not, at least you are aware of them. Prepare, in advance. Put reminders into your calendar of things to do for college in the latter part of your Junior year.

Why These Lists/Services

People can, and do, make a career out of keeping up with all of this. The ones below are excellent starting points. If you find other good ones, comment here and we’ll add them!

Scholarship Aggregator Sites:

• My Scholly  (Phone App) – Worth the small charge for better results
• IR Reviews – Lays out all of the top sites, explains the FinAid Process.
• StudentAid.Ed.Gov – The government’s official site;
• Big Future – The College Board’s official site;
• Salliemae – A private/government program –  Major aggregator of scholarship money;