Wren's Links
For Students
High school seniors, start applying for scholarships sooner instead of later. Waiting might come back to bite you in the ass later, when you're up to your elbows in debt. :[ Here are the most helpful sites I've found. They're both free.
Zinch. Reminiscent of facebook, Zinch encourages you to create a profile that combines your interests, work experience, and academics, then connects you to a list of scholarships that you are eligible for. It's extremely comprehensive, allowing you to categorize scholarship opportunities by favorites, deadline, and amount, as well as to see what other students had to say about them and how many have applied. It also has a college search feature, but I haven't had a reason to use that yet. It has a hip "appeal to teenagers" feel to it that is a little annoying, but that is my only complaint thus far, except for a wacky conspiracy theory that the presence of profiles is there so the Zinch Powers-that-Be can survey the youth and sell their opinions to businesses, or something like that. I mean, it is ad-free... where do they get their revenue?
FastWeb. Very similar to Zinch. It doesn't have the profile feature (as far as I know), but it has pretty much the same Scholarship search/match-up, and it alerts you of upcoming deadlines. Absolutely riddled with ads, though.
Zinch. Reminiscent of facebook, Zinch encourages you to create a profile that combines your interests, work experience, and academics, then connects you to a list of scholarships that you are eligible for. It's extremely comprehensive, allowing you to categorize scholarship opportunities by favorites, deadline, and amount, as well as to see what other students had to say about them and how many have applied. It also has a college search feature, but I haven't had a reason to use that yet. It has a hip "appeal to teenagers" feel to it that is a little annoying, but that is my only complaint thus far, except for a wacky conspiracy theory that the presence of profiles is there so the Zinch Powers-that-Be can survey the youth and sell their opinions to businesses, or something like that. I mean, it is ad-free... where do they get their revenue?
FastWeb. Very similar to Zinch. It doesn't have the profile feature (as far as I know), but it has pretty much the same Scholarship search/match-up, and it alerts you of upcoming deadlines. Absolutely riddled with ads, though.