The Best Sites to Apply for Scholarships [June 2019]

It’s important to understand that each scholarship may have its own particular requirements for applying and qualifying. Therefore, it’s best that you start early with your scholarship research. The more options you find and the quicker you apply, the better your chances are of landing a scholarship and reducing your education costs.

Of course, in order to apply for a scholarship, online or otherwise, you must first find one that fits your needs or one for which you match the criteria. Here are some of the best sites where you can find your ideal scholarships.

Student Aid Website

The U.S. Department of Labor offers a free search tool for anyone looking at scholarships online. This lets interested students browse through an extensive list of available scholarships.

You can search for scholarships by awards, region, field of study, affiliation, and basic keywords. Each search result will have all the pertinent information associated with that scholarship program including how much it covers, what’s its purpose, and the contact information you need to apply.

The scholarship finder has over 8,000 scholarships, grants, fellowships, and other student financial aid solutions.

College Board

College Board is another big player in this field. Its scholarship search engine should help you sift through over 2,000 scholarships, fellowships, and other forms of financial aid. The search filter is great as it features many options such as minority background, disabilities, religious affiliations, law enforcement, awards, and so on.

Once you find a scholarship that looks interesting you may have to go to the website of the college or company that offer the scholarship. Since most results will yield private scholarship results, applications are done off-site. The good news is that most of the scholarships have online application forms and may even accept digital essays (video essays, video testimonials, etc.)

Chegg

Chegg may not have as many scholarships in its database as other search tools but it does have one amazing feature in its filter. It allows you to search for scholarships which have online application forms.

This can be a great time-saver. The only other filters you can apply are the level of education, age, and GPA score. Most of the scholarships featured on Chegg are legitimate, which is another plus for the website.

Broke Scholar

Broke Scholar offers yet another basic search tool with an impressive database of scholarships, fellowships, and various grants. You can search by study, ethnicity, gender, area, or years of study in order to narrow down the results.

Another bonus is that most of the scholarships featured on Broke Scholar come with online application forms. You may still need to write an essay here and there, but that’s not at all uncommon, right?

Scholarships.com

Scholarships.com is one of the oldest, longest-running online resources for students. Their scholarship directory has well over 3 million entries in the forms of scholarships, grants, and other types of financial aid.

If you’re worried about paying too much for your education, you can start by creating a profile on the website. After adding some very basic personal information and some information on your current level of education, the search tool becomes available.

You can use a number of filters and keywords to search the directory for a scholarship appropriate for you. Alternatively, you can manually browse the directory by selecting precise categories. Note that not all scholarships may have an online application form. However, enough of them do, so you shouldn’t dismiss Scholarships.com, just because it’s an older website.

It’s also important to remember that without an account, you won’t be able to view the qualification criteria for most of the scholarships. Nor will you be able to apply directly through the website.

Options for Military Families

Students from military families can go through the websites of each military branch in order to find out what types of scholarship criteria they meet. There probably aren’t that many programs as they should be. Nevertheless, this list should give you a good idea of where to look for online scholarship applications.

Final Thoughts

Always be wary of scholarship scams and too-good-to-be-true sweepstakes. There are many websites masquerading as free resource tools and many fictitious scholarships.

Student loans are hard enough to repay. Falling prey to some scholarship scam can make things even worse.

Last but not least, remember that not all scholarships will cover all or even most of your education costs. The majority of scholarships, especially those which take in online registrations, are between $1,000 and $5,000. This is hardly enough to cover even the cost of public education.