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ScholarshipOwl Review: Find and Apply for Great Scholarships

With the average cost of college being more than $20,000, most students want to do whatever they can to get financial aid. There are lots of scholarships out there, but figuring out which ones are legit and how to apply can become a full-time job. That’s where ScholarshipOwl comes in. It’s a platform that helps you streamline the scholarship application process. But is ScholarshipOwl legit? Get the full details about the platform and what it can offer you by checking out our ScholarshipOwl review.

ScholarshipOwl Explained

What is ScholarshipOwl? If you are new to the world of financial aid searches, this automated platform makes finding scholarships a whole lot easier. The website’s creator, Kenny Sandoriffy recognized the need for a scholarship search engine during his school application process. So, he decided to create a website that streamlines the process. His network gives students and families access to all of the financial aid that they are eligible to receive. In a nutshell, ScholarshipOwl is an automated scholarship service.

How Does ScholarshipOwl Work?

Searching for scholarships that you qualify for is a tedious process. Consider ScholarshipOwl the intermediary. It simplifies the process and takes less than fifteen minutes to send your profile out to hundreds of scholarships. To get started, create your profile on the website. Then, you will be matched with a wide variety of scholarships based upon your profile. From there, select the scholarships that most closely match your interests and needs. You can apply for all of them if you would like to increase your chances of receiving aid.

Some of these scholarships will need additional information. When this happens, you will receive a notification for completion. These tasks require a bit of extra energy, but the potential payoff makes it all worthwhile. You can expect to write an extra essay or provide a writing sample for specific scholarships and organizations. After everything on the form is complete, you can sit back and wait for a response from the scholarships that you applied for. ScholarshipOwl helps to ensure you will not miss any necessary deadlines to apply.

What Happens When You Sign Up

When you sign up for it, you create one account and complete one scholarship application. You provide the service with basic information, such as where your gender identity, birth date, and what you want to study.

The more information you provide ScholarshipOwl, the more scholarships it can match you with. After you’ve completed the application, it returns a variety of scholarships to you. The average student finds about 100 scholarships on the platform in a month.

Most ScholarshipOwl reviews will point out that the platform operates on a “freemium” model. How much it can do for you depends on how much you are willing to pay. If you just want to use the platform for free, you can take advantage of the list of scholarships and the scholarship matches.

If you want ScholarshipOwl to automate your application process and send your details along to the various companies and organizations offering scholarships, you’ll have to pay. The platform has several different membership levels.

Membership Levels

image via: ScholarshipOwl

  • VIP. The VIP membership level is ScholarshipOwl’s most expensive and most elite level of service. It costs $99 per month but provides the greatest number of features. Along with having the system automatically apply to the scholarships you match with, the VIP level includes a review of one 500-word essay each month and tutorials from experts in college finances.
  • Monthly. ScholarshipOwl’s monthly service is $20 per month and includes automatic application to the scholarships you’re matched with, plus re-application if needed.
  • Quarterly. The quarterly plan offers the same features that the monthly plan does, but because you pay for three months at a time, it is $5 less per month.
  • Semi-Annually. The twice a year or semi-annual plan includes the features of the monthly/quarterly plan but works out to be $10 per month, since you pay for six months at a time.

What Does ScholarshipOwl Offer?

ScholarshipOwl connects you to more than one million dollars worth of scholarships. The platform is always adding new scholarship programs, with around $125,000 in awards added monthly.  The types of scholarships the platform matches you with include:

Need-Based Scholarships

Need-based scholarships factor in your family’s financial situation when determining whether or not you’re a candidate. If you don’t have a lot saved for college or if your family doesn’t have a high income, you might qualify for some need-based scholarships. In some cases, having a sibling or other family member in school at the same time can also affect your financial need.

Merit-Based Scholarships

Did you get a 4.0 for your entire high school career? A perfect 2400 on your SATs? You’re most likely going to qualify for a merit-based scholarship. Merit-based scholarships are also given out based on what you’ve done outside of the classroom. If you were class president, spent every afternoon volunteering or led your school’s sports team to victory, there might be a merit-based scholarship with your name on it.

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Athletic Scholarships

Whether you played just one sport or were a three-season athlete, athletic scholarships reward your strengths on the field or court. Keep in mind that nabbing an athletic scholarship often means you need to continue to play in college.

Artistic Scholarships

Artistic scholarships reward your creativity and talent. Whether you’re a painter, actor or photographer, these scholarships give you money for a school in exchange for your creative abilities.

Scholarships for International Students

If you don’t live in the US, but want to go to college in the US, getting financial aid can be a challenge. School often costs more for international students, and you don’t qualify for federal financial aid. That’s where scholarships for international students can come in handy. These scholarships might cover your tuition and include stipends for room and board and other expenses.

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Scholarships for Minorities

Some scholarships are intended for students who belong to certain ethnic groups or minorities who are otherwise underrepresented at schools. Minority scholarships might be designed for students in a particular ethnic group, for students who belong to an underrepresented gender or both. In some cases, the scholarships are intended for minority students who plan to major or study in a particular field

Essay Free Scholarships

Are no-essay scholarships the Holy Grail of scholarships? Maybe, as many applications require you to submit at least one 500-word essay. No essay scholarships might only need you to apply or they might require something else instead of an essay, such as a drawing or video recording.

Unusual and Interesting Scholarships

Unique scholarships are those that recognize strange or hidden talents or those that are off the beaten track. You might find a scholarship that asks you to write an essay based on something you found on LinkedIn, for example, or a scholarship from a baby highchair review website.

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“You Deserve It” Scholarship

The ScholarshipOwl “You Deserve It” scholarship might be the easiest scholarship to apply to on the platform. One $1,000 scholarship is awarded each month to a person who created a profile on the website that month. It’s a random drawing, and the odds of winning are about 1 in 60,000, depending on how many people open accounts on ScholarshipOwl during the month.

Using ScholarshipOwl

No ScholarshipOwl review is complete without a guide to signing up for and using the platform. Sign-up is pretty simple. You put in your personal information, including your name, birthday, high school, and college plans.

Once you’ve made an account, the platform connects you to a variety of scholarships and asks if you’d like to apply to them. You’re then given a choice of payment plans, including the VIP and monthly plan. Each option includes a 7-day trial period.

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You can also decide not to sign up for a plan and click on the terms and conditions of your scholarship matches to learn more. If you don’t want to pay for ScholarshipOwl but still want to apply to some of your matches, you can do so on your own.

How much info you give the platform affects your matches. Once you’ve created your profile, you can go in and add more details, such as your interests and education information.

Our Review

Hunting for scholarships can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Our ScholarshipOwl review is a positive one, as we found that the platform did streamline the scholarship hunt. With a limited amount of information, the website was able to pull up more than 500 scholarships that we could apply for.

We appreciated the flexibility offered by ScholarshipOwl. It’s not only designed for high school students who are attending school for the first time. It also connects graduate students and non-traditional students to potential sources of funding.

Is ScholarshipOwl Legitimate? We think so. We double checked many of the scholarships that were recommended and found that they are legitimate funding opportunities for college and graduate students.

The site is also secure and is protected by SSL, so we felt confident putting in our personal information.

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Alternatives to ScholarshipOwl

Although ScholarshipOwl reviews suggest that it’s one of the better scholarship search and application services out there, it’s not the only option. Several other platforms that offer the same or a very similar service exist.

  • Fastweb. Fastweb is a college scholarship search database. LikeScholarshipOwl, it provides access to more than 1.5 million scholarships.
  • Chegg. Chegg is like Fastweb, in that it is a database of scholarships. You don’t need to make an account to browse the available scholarships.
  • Scholly. Scholly might be the closest to ScholarshipOwl in what it offers. It matches you to scholarships and helps to streamline the process of applying.

Common Questions about ScholarshipOwl

Is ScholarshipOwl Free to Use?

Yes and no. You can create a free account on ScholarshipOwl, but if you want the platform to apply for scholarships on your behalf, you’ll need to sign up for a paid plan.

How Many Scholarships Can I Apply For?

You can apply for as many scholarships as you’re eligible for using ScholarshipOwl. Keep in mind that if you end up winning enough funding to cover the cost of your schooling and beyond, your school might only allow you to keep the amount that covers tuition and certain school-related expenses.

How Many Scholarship Opportunities are Available?

ScholarshipOwl has more than 1.4 million scholarships available. Every month, it adds programs worth more than $125,000 to its database.

Can Scholarship Owl be Trusted?

Is ScholarshipOwl trustworthy? Yes. The site uses recognized security features, including secure socket layer, which encrypts private information and keeps it out of the reach of hackers. When you create an account on the site, you’re given a privacy policy to review. You’re also able to cancel and delete your account at any time. Apply today!

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