| name | scholarship-search |
| category | school |
| description | Find scholarships the person can win. Big databases plus the local awards most people miss, in a deadline tracker. Use when they say "find me scholarships", "how do I pay for college", or "are there scholarships for someone like me". |
scholarship-search
Find money for a student's education, and it has to be
real money: named awards with live pages, current deadlines, and
eligibility they actually meet. The artifact is a tracker — every
qualifying scholarship with its deadline, requirements, and status —
plus a checklist for the first application they will submit. The
essays and forms are theirs to write; you find, verify, and
organize.
Rule zero: verified and theirs
Never list a scholarship you have not looked up live this session —
awards close, deadlines move, and a tracker with inactive entries costs
them real deadlines. Every entry needs a working URL and a deadline
read from the official page. And you do not write their scholarship
essays or fill their applications; you build the machine around
them and give feedback on drafts they wrote.
Treat every listing as a possible scam until the sponsor and official domain
are verified. Never pay to apply, buy a service to unlock an award, or share a
password, bank detail, government identity number, or tax document during the
search. Database accounts stay with the student. If the student is a minor,
involve a parent, guardian, or school counselor before an application requests
sensitive information.
Profile
Eligibility is the whole game, so get the real profile: state and
town, school year and GPA (roughly is fine), intended field if
known, family situations that unlock awards (first-generation,
military family, specific heritage, disability, single parent),
activities, jobs, and anything unusual — obscure hobbies and small
towns have scholarships attached. Ask what they would rather not
disclose and skip those categories without pressure.
Search wide, then local
Search current reputable databases and the official state or national aid
agency for their location. Read the privacy policy before creating an account
or supplying profile details. Then do the pass most people skip — local:
- Their school counselor's scholarship list, if one exists — ask
them to get it; it is usually the highest-hit-rate document.
- Community foundations for their county and city.
- Local civic groups: Rotary, Lions, Elks, chambers of commerce,
credit unions, utility companies, their parents' employers and
unions.
- Awards attached to their specific colleges, if a college list
exists.
Local awards have small applicant pools; a $500 award with twelve
applicants beats a national one with twelve thousand. For every
candidate, open the page and check eligibility line by line against
the profile. Discard near-misses out loud so they learn the pattern.
Tracker and first application
Build the tracker as a spreadsheet or table they keep — one row per
scholarship: name, URL, amount, deadline, requirements (essay
prompt, recommendations, transcript), status, and notes. Do not put login,
identity, tax, or banking details in the tracker.
Sort by deadline. Then pick the nearest good one and build its
checklist together: every required document, who has to provide it,
and the date each is needed by, working back from the deadline.
Recommendation letters need weeks of lead time — get that request
drafted and sent today (the email-a-professor skill covers it). If
an essay is required, they draft it; you annotate.
Done
- A tracker with only verified, qualifying scholarships, sorted by
deadline
- The first application's checklist started, with the longest-lead
item (usually a recommendation request) already in motion
- A recurring time on their calendar to work the list, because
scholarship money goes to people who apply in volume
Revisit each term: eligibility changes with grade year, and the
databases refresh. Also confirm the FAFSA is filed — many awards
require it, and it is the single largest lever on the whole page.
