ScholarshipOwl was founded by veteran tech entrepreneur Kenny Sandorffy, who believes passionately in the need to transform the application process, so students can get the aid they need to pay for their education. Sandorffy became frustrated after completing a single aid application took longer than applying to his college.
The college application process is already time consuming enough! But scholarships can help pay for college so it’s worth taking the time to apply. Imagine if you could use one registration form to apply for dozens of scholarships and they are targeted to you?!
That’s the genius of ScholarshipOwl!
One registration form to apply for dozens of scholarships, both new and obscure!!
Is ScholarshipOwl expensive? No! It’s free! ScholarshipOwl also matches Graduate-School Scholarships. They match students to hundreds of scholarships AND automate the application process. Launched in July, they already have 25,000 students in the system and are matching them with up to 60-70 scholarships on average.
Most students are eligible for dozens, even hundreds of scholarships, but seldom have the time to find and win that aid, missing the opportunity to get much of their education paid for.
Signup takes as little as two minutes. Basic information turns a visitor into a member, and generates the first matches from more than 3.5 million scholarships. More information provides more matches, which can be viewed and prioritized easily and quickly. If an essay or other additional information is needed, the program details what’s needed and makes it easy to add. With a few clicks, a completed application is then submitted to a scholarship provider.
All members are given a ScholarshipOwl email address for each member protects their privacy and consolidates their application correspondence in one place for easy follow-up.
What’s the catch or how does ScholarshipOwl monetize its service?
If the student chooses to go forward, marketing partners offer students surveys to fill out before accessing the application phase. If they choose to opt out, ScholarshipOwl will allow students to apply to a few applications every couple of weeks, rather than all at once.
ScholarshipOwl also has a premium level, costing $20 per month or $100 per year, which will not only eliminate the surveys, but also match students with an account manager to advise them on the finer points of scholarship applications and essays.
I think it’s a good time tradeoff — filling out a few marketing surveys in order to apply to dozens of scholarships in one go. How about you? What do you think?
This post was sponsored by ScholarshipOwl. My high school daughter will be checking it out in a few years when she gets ready to apply for college. My opinions, as usual, are my own.
BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 is a book that I created to highlight books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as the characters in their books.
This would have been helpful when I was in college. I spent SO many hours researching and applying for scholarships – which paid off, since I received the carefully selected ones I applied for and was able to reduce my college debt somewhat as a result.
Hi MaryAnne,
It sounds like a great way to find and apply to scholarships! It’s such a busy time of year if you are applying to colleges that I don’t know how kids find time to apply to scholarships as well without this.
Not free any more, as of 3/16/2016
Hi Lauire,
Thanks for the heads up. Guess it was just free when it first started! Looks like a great service though!
I recently attempted to use their referral service to get the free week of premium services. On the website it says all you have to do is get five friends to sign up which I did. However, instead of getting premium right away, I received a series of emails from them telling me to sign up on various survey websites and to fill out a survey, which I did. After that, I still did not get the premium services. I contacted their support team and got no response. I’d be careful with this website, might be a scam. (At least for “trial” users)
Hi Nick,
It used to be free and now I understand they are charging. I’m sorry that they are not responding. I hope it’s just growing pains.
Anyone know how likely it is to actually getting a scholarship through Scholarship Owl? I’d love to try this scholarship finder but I don’t know if it’s worth paying $10 a month…
If you fill out the sign up info and then don’t follow through with payment, they will send you increasingly better deals until you finally get a free trial. Unfortunately, it is very hard to customize the search, meaning I got tons of offers that I wasn’t eligible for. I ended up not applying to anything and very glad I didn’t pay. For a free site, try fastweb. It’s not that great either, but it is free and does let you enter more information to get more relevant scholarships.
Thanks for your great advice Laurie!
Hi Scarlet,
Did you see Laurie’s comment? She had a good tip about getting better pricing.