Wyatt Unhinged: Scholarships are Broken. Here's Why.

 Introduction

I'm going to college this fall. I have around $8,000 in scholarships. None of them is from outside groups. All that money is from GCU. I’ve applied to more scholarships than I can count (and remember), and none of them have been winners, and fewer than 10 have actually responded to whether I won or not. And if I want better odds? Pay them a ridiculous amount of money to gain one extra entry. It’s ridiculous. And the entire scholarship system is broken.

Context

When you Google “scholarships for high school seniors”, you’ll get websites like Bold, Scholarships360, and Sallie. And each one is terrible. They don’t actually match you with the right scholarships; they don’t have a “I’m going to this school” function for once you’ve actually enrolled, and they have a terrible response rate. The majority of emails I get from them? Spam, spam, spam, spam, SPAM. I’m trying to save money, not fund your retirement account. You should not be trying to make money off of an already broken system. It’s not a good look. Now, I’m not calling for government intervention. That’s the last thing needed. And honestly? Nothing will change, because there’s no other good website out there, and finding these scholarships is like determining the airspeed velocity of an unladen sparrow. It creates more questions than answers.

What's Broken

Now that there's some context, I’m going to break down what I despise about these websites. I will be fully honest (while remaining “calm” and “respectful”), and if you work at one of these companies and are reading this, take notes.

1. Bold.org: Pay-to-win, clunky, geared towards consumers instead of students, full of advertising slop, terrible matching system. Bold is actually a great idea on paper. Complete tasks to get a better chance of a scholarship. Reality? 90% the tasks are just "complete this task from an advertiser and spend money". For someone who's more frugal, this is an immediate disadvantage. Not only do you have a harder chance of winning, but you also get ads and sponsors shoved down your throat. Great idea, terrible execution. Consumerism at its worst.
2. Scholarships.com: Sponsors galore, terrible matching system, impossible to find actual scholarships outside of the ones immediately listed. Scholarships.com, while everyone has a semi-equal footing in that it's not pay-to-win, suffers many of the same pitfalls as Bold.org. Based on how much they advertise for the Navy, I almost wonder if they're secretly working for the Navy. And if you're looking for scholarships, the ones "matched" are half sponsored and half close-but-no-cigar. They would technically match, except they don't apply to the state I'm in or going to college in. Equal footing, advertising slop central.
3. Scholarships360: Sponsors, ads, referrals to bad sites, and a semi-decent search system. Out of all the scholarship websites, Scholarships360 is up there as one of the best. It's not jam-packed with ads and sponsors, and the search system is not half bad. But it has a lot of affiliate scholarships that lead to the not-so-great scholarship services, and the sponsored ones are there *just* enough to be annoying. So, so, so close, but still suffers from ad slop.
4. ScholarshipOwl: Pay-to-win, you can't apply to any scholarship without giving them money. This is the one website I would never recommend to anyone. The only way to apply to scholarships on their website is to pay them, and when better websites exist, why would I give them at least $10/month, and even then, they have a $69/month one that gives you almost everything that a free scholarship service gives you for free. Giant cash grab.
5. Sallie: Email spam, referrals to bad sites, and a decent matching service. Out of all the scholarship services, Sallie is probably the best, although Scholarships360 may have something to say about it. No pay-to-win, little to no sponsors/ads, and the matching system is pretty good for a scholarship service. However, they do send you a fair amount of emails on using them to lower debt. Not the end of the world, but annoying, and it clogs up the inbox. No ads, but the email spam is there.

Conclusion

So there you have it. My unfiltered, honest review of five of the most popular scholarship service sites out there on the internet. Will anything change because some questionably qualified dude with a laptop and access to the World Wide Web wrote about it on his blog? No. But for the parents out there that might find this, I hope it helps. And for students looking at scholarships. Start looking for them before senior year, so you have the list and can just mass-apply. The US military's anti-air doctrine of accuracy by volume can apply here. If you throw enough rounds at the target, you should get a hit at some point.

Rant over.