Best Scholarship Websites: Which Ones Are Actually Worth Using?

Best for: Families who want to browse current scholarship lists without turning the process into another complicated matching system.

JLV College Counseling has been one of my favorite scholarship resources for years, and it is still one I like today.

Instead of forcing everything through a giant personalized dashboard, JLV publishes straightforward scholarship lists organized by things like:

• deadline
• grade level
• major
• state
• background or circumstances

It also continues to publish new scholarship roundups regularly. At the time of publication of this article, its Scholarship Saturday series is still being updated with current opportunities.

That makes it especially useful when you simply want to sit down, browse opportunities, and follow the promising ones back to their source.

Why I like it: It feels much more like someone has already done some of the scholarship hunting for you, without making the website itself the center of the process.

My reminder: JLV gives you the lead. I would still click through and verify the current scholarship information with the organization actually offering the award.

Best for: Families who want to search and filter a large scholarship collection without depending on a personalized matching algorithm.

CareerOneStop's Scholarship Finder is one of the resources I would add to my list today that was not a major part of my older scholarship-site guide.

CareerOneStop is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, and its Scholarship Finder contains thousands of scholarships, fellowships, grants, and other awards.

You can search by keyword and narrow opportunities using filters such as:

• award type
• level of study
• location
• affiliations
• other eligibility factors

I especially like one thing they say right on the tool:

Scholarship information can change, so students should confirm the current details on the scholarship's own website.

Exactly.

That is how I want families treating any database.

Why I like it: It gives you a lot to search without pretending the database replaces the actual scholarship provider.

Best for: Families who want a larger scholarship database but care about somebody doing some screening before opportunities make it onto the site.

Scholarships360 has become one of the scholarship platforms I feel more comfortable recommending.

Their research team says it individually reviews scholarships and tries to exclude opportunities with warning signs such as:

• application fees
• questionable use of student data
• obvious lead-generation purposes
• no evidence of previous awards
• outdated awards
• missing contact information
• other signs that the provider may not be trustworthy

They also offer public scholarship browsing and personalized matching if you choose to create an account.

That does not mean I would stop doing my own verification.

But it does mean there is another layer of screening before you begin.

Why I like it: If you want the convenience of a more traditional scholarship database, I would rather start with one that is transparent about how it reviews what gets listed.

Best for: Adding a separate pool of scholarship opportunities that you cannot simply find on every other database.

Bold.org is different from a normal scholarship aggregator.

The scholarships it manages are funded by donors and administered directly through Bold.org, and the company says its Bold.org scholarships are exclusive to its platform. Students apply there rather than simply being redirected to an outside provider.

That makes Bold useful for a very specific reason:

It can give you access to another pool of opportunities.

You will need to create a student profile, and the platform uses that profile as part of the scholarship experience.

Why I like it: You are not just seeing the same outside scholarship that has been copied into ten different databases.

I still would not make Bold your entire strategy, but it can be a worthwhile additional source.

Best for: Students who want scholarship matching plus a more streamlined way to complete applications.

Going Merry matches students to scholarships based on the personal and educational information in their profiles.

Where it becomes especially useful is the application side.

Going Merry has built its platform around reducing some of the repeated work involved in applying. Its own materials describe features for applying directly to many scholarships, reusing information and supporting materials, saving applications, and managing applications in one place.

Going Merry itself is also careful not to claim that using the platform automatically makes someone more likely to win. Their support materials explicitly say the platform makes applying easier, but the result still depends on the student's application and supporting materials.

I appreciate that distinction.

Why I like it: It can reduce friction when a student is actively applying, instead of functioning only as another giant list of links.

Best for: Students already using College Board tools who want scholarship matching integrated into the same ecosystem.

BigFuture's Scholarship Search uses information in a student's profile to match the student with scholarships whose requirements fit that profile.

Students can create or update a College Board profile, receive matches, and reuse some profile information in compatible applications rather than repeatedly entering the same information.

I do not think you need BigFuture and five other giant matching databases.

But if your student already uses College Board or BigFuture for other parts of the college process, it can make sense to use the scholarship search that is already there.

Why I like it: Convenience. Especially for families already inside the College Board ecosystem.

Best for: Students who want to see potential institutional scholarship money from participating colleges while they are still in high school, or while preparing to transfer.

RaiseMe does something fundamentally different from most of the other websites on this page.

It is not primarily a database of outside scholarships.

Students follow participating colleges, add achievements to a RaiseMe portfolio, and can earn micro-scholarship amounts from those colleges for things such as grades, activities, volunteering, and other accomplishments.

RaiseMe says the earnings shown through participating four-year institutions represent a minimum amount the student will receive from that school if the student applies, is accepted, and ultimately attends.

That is why I would not compare RaiseMe directly with JLV, Bold, or Scholarships360.

It is solving a different problem.

Why I like it: It can help a student discover institutional scholarship opportunities connected directly to colleges they may actually attend.