Despite the millions of dollars in scholarships available, most students feel like they simply cannot get a piece to help pay for their tuition. However, most of these students simply never try. The first step is browsing available awards that you might qualify for, so we have hopefully made it easier by providing a list of five of the best places to search for scholarships online:


Fast Web Scholarship Search

With over 1.3 million scholarships, FastWeb is consecutively ranked the number one place for college students to find award money. Once you register an account, you will fill out a personal profile that filters scholarships to your demographic (i.e. race, gender, field of study, etc). Their interface is pretty easy to navigate and they send a weekly newsletter with financial aid information and scholarship tips that are pretty useful. The only qualm I have with FastWeb is the amount of advertisements that hit you while searching through their scholarship database. Every three or four scholarships that you look at usually have some type of offer like “Join the Nation Guard and Attend College for Free” or “Get 100 Free Songs at This Music Site”. Other than this slight announce, FastWeb is a fantastic resource for award seekers.

Scholarship Experts

Although not as well known as FastWeb, Scholarship Experts actually has more scholarships (2.4 million total) that students can browse through. The premise is the same, where after filing out your profile, which takes a few minutes, you are provided a list of awards, specific to your demographic. I actually think that Scholarship Experts has a better summary of each award than FastWeb, however they do not provide nearly as many tools and their registration form is a bit repetitive.

College Board Scholarship Search

When students think of the College Board, they think SATs and always run in fear. However, this once held evil monster is actually a pretty useful site for those in need of financial aid information and who are looking for scholarships. Unlike the other sites, the College Board does not require you to register (although this is the only way you can save your results), it does not bombard you with advertisements and can provide results step-by-step while you fill out your profile, rather than having to go through all the questions at once. Although the process is easier, the College Board seems to provide much fewer awards with briefer summaries.

Next Student Scholarship Search

Next Student focuses on student loan consolidation, however, they also offer a scholarship search tool for registered students to browse their 2.4 million awards. I am assuming they use the same database as Scholarship Experts. In addition to their scholarship search, they have articles on financial aid and student loans.

Free Scholarship Guide

After signing up for an account at Free Scholarship Guide your name will automatically be entered into their semi-annual scholarship drawing where you could win a $5000 scholarship to help pay for school, housing or books. Of all the sites we reviewed, this site looked most like a potential spammer, but we didn’t want to judge a book by its cover. Free Scholarship Guide still provides a good number of scholarships catered towards your profile.

Keep in mind, however, that these are just databases and search engines, each individual scholarship still needs to be critiqued in its own merit. To avoid getting duped by scammers, check out our post on how to avoid scholarship scams.