Top Scholarship Apps to Try Out - Money Tip Tuesday

Once you complete the FASFA for your soon-to-be college Freshman, your next move is to find the best scholarships to help supplement the cost of the undergrad degree. This money tip walks you through top rated online resources you can use to navigate the scholarship world.

• View the article at greatvaluecolleges.net
• Learn more about Scholarship Owl
• Learn more about the Raise Me app
• Learn more about Plexuss
• Learn more about the Going Merry platform
• Search more scholarships at Scholarsnapp and College Board

Like what you heard? Go ahead and share on your social media! Visit trianglecu.org to learn more about how we can serve you and don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Transcript:

Parents, if you’re suffering from sticker shock on the cost of your student’s undergrad degree, get in line. It’s crazy and only getting worse. As a parent, I’m very thankful we have online resources to help navigate the scholarship world. I recently downloaded my first scholarship app. Then I realized, I’m entering all this data for my student, but is this even going to work?  

With a quick Google search, I found their top ten scholarship apps, according to greatvaluecolleges.net. I won’t go into the full list, but I will share their top three and a brief description of each one. Again, this is an excerpt list from greatvaluecolleges.net: 

#1 ScholarshipOwl - Recommended by a whole line of reputable organizations such as Forbes and NewsWatch, ScholarshipOwl really can help all kinds of scholarship-minded users. With this great app, one can register their information and educational goals, and then the app automatically works to find applicable scholarship opportunities matching that individual’s qualifying specs and educational goals. 

# 2 RaiseMe - Beginning as early as the 9th-grade year, students using the RaiseMe app can begin to accumulate valuable micro-scholarships. Essentially, once a student is registered with the RaiseMe app, they can post accomplishments to it and then be rewarded with scholarship monies depending on the weight of their particular accomplishments. In addition to generating scholarship funds, this app also serves as a basic but very helpful information resource for US colleges and their associated attendance costs. 

#3 PLEXUSS - Another great, app-based tool for locating scholarships [and] comes by way of the PLEXUSS College Admission Help app. In PLEXUSS, users can not only locate any number of excellent scholarship opportunities, but they can also find the best-fitting colleges for them, information on financial aid, and more. The app’s “Connections” feature even allows for making connections and communicating with other, like-minded users for further versatility and networking options toward those goals. Source: greatvaluecolleges.net 

Interestingly, when I searched the App store, my strategy was to download the app with the best reviews. Based on my search, I chose Going Merry Scholarships, with a 5-point star rating with 5.2K reviews; RaiseMe also had a 5-star rating with 16K reviews; ScholarshipOwl had a 4-star rating with 816 reviews, and PLEXXUS had 5-stars with 197 reviews.  

Whichever app you choose, the process is pretty simple. After you download the app, enter your student’s information and some filtering data, and then the app will identify the best scholarship matches for you. In my own experience, with Go Merry, the app identified $316K scholarship opportunities and allowed me to search scholarships by value and due dates. My daughter focused on those with an immediate due date and filled out applications and uploaded essays as required. 

My simple Google search also produced information on College Board Scholarship Search (formerly ScholarSnapp). Apparently, this is a free tool that helps you apply to scholarships that is connected to your student’s Common App account. Per the description online, College Board Scholarship Search is integrated with the Common App and allows students to apply to several scholarships by reusing application information. I haven’t tried this yet but plan to look into it a little deeper. 

The amount of online scholarship information will make your head spin. As a parent, I’m going to narrow down which app works best for me and my student, and that’s it. I did find the aforementioned, greatvaluecolleges.net site helpful. In addition to their assessment of the apps, they also listed “30 Great Scholarships” based on field of study. 

My biggest struggle is: will the time that we’re committing to this pay off? I can’t tell you with 100% surety that it will, but as a parent looking for some help in paying for college, I’m willing to spend a little time and take a little risk. 

Hopefully, you found this episode helpful. If so, we would like to hear from you about thoughts on this show or maybe you have some ideas on other topics we should cover,  email us at tcupodcast@trianglecu.org. Be sure to subscribe to the Making Money Personal podcast for our full episodes and weekly Money Tips wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Facebook for more great content. 

Thank you to our sponsor, Triangle Credit Union, and thank you, as always, for listening. 

Have a great day everyone!