EduTech: How to easily find and apply for scholarships using iOS

EduTech is a 9to5Mac weekly series that focuses on technology’s application in education, lower and higher level, both for productivity and enjoyment. If you have suggestions for topics or specific questions you’d like to see answered, feel free to let me know. Catch up on past installments here. 

One of the more daunting tasks leading up to college is thinking of how to best pay for it and how to get the best deal possible. Some students are lucky and qualify for scholarships from the university their attending, while others are forced to look elsewhere for scholarship money.

Either way, scholarships can be a huge help when it comes to bearing the burden of a college education. In this week’s EduTech, we’re going to take a look at the best iOS apps for tracking scholarships…

Paying for college is stressful, there’s no way around it. Whether the student themselves is paying for it, the parents, or someone else, someone is carrying the stress associated with it. Luckily, there are a few apps available for iOS that make it incredibly easy to track available scholarships and apply to them.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus specifically on an app called Scholly, though we’ll highlight a few alternatives at the end.

Scholly

If the name Scholly sounds familiar, it’s because the app was actually featured on an episode of Shark Tank, where creator Christopher Gray received an investment from Daymond John and Lori Greiner. That put aside, however, I’ve found Scholly to have the largest amount of information, as well as the best and easiest to use interface.

Upon downloading Scholly, you’re asked to create an account and then enter a variety of information about yourself. The information allows Scholly to best match you with the scholarships for which you qualify. The information it asks for include things like what degree you’re seeking, what college you plan to attend or are attending, your GPA, whether you qualify for “need” or “merit” scholarship, and more.

You can also enter a goal amount, allowing you to track how much money you have in scholarships.

Once you’ve entered all of this information, you’ll be presented with a variety of scholarships for which you qualify. These scholarships are ranked by how long the application window is open for. If you tap on a specific scholarship, you’ll see a brief description of what it requires, as well as a quick link to jump to the application.

If you find a scholarship that seems of interest to you, you can save it so that it’s easily accessible right from your Dashboard in Scholly.

If you’re a high school senior, current undergraduate, or graduate student in the U.S. (or a parent of those!) Scholly is for you. Designed to ease the scholarship application process, our patented scholarship-matching engine delivers a smarter, targeted list of scholarships that are uniquely suited to you. The Scholly mobile and web platform turns the long months of searching for free money for college into minutes.

In addition to offering specific scholarship information, Scholly also offers a wealth of information about how to go about being picked as the scholarship winner. This includes information such as essays and advice for writing essays, as well as what qualities scholarship administrators tend to look for the most:

To help you win scholarships, Scholly also gives you free access to winning scholarship essays and advice. This app connects you to the Scholly web platform, allowing you to access your account wherever and whenever is most convenient for you.

While the Scholly app is free on the App Store, in order to access the scholarship information, you’ll have to create a paid account, which runs $2.99 per month. In my opinion, however, it’s definitely worth paying $2.99 per month to potentially save thousands of dollars on your college education.

Alternatives

Though my favorite, and the app I use, is Scholly, there are a few alternatives available on the App Store, some of which are free. Check them out at the links below:

• Scholarships.com
• Schoold
• CollegeHunch
• College Scholarship Calculator

In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably wise to use all of these apps to find the most scholarships possible. Paying for college can be incredibly stressful, so any amount of money you can get from scholarships helps.

If you use Scholly or another one of these apps, let us know down in the comments if you’ve been successful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZMwc9bL2E