The Top Scholarship Finding Resources
Not all scholarship sites are made equal
👋 Welcome Back to Recruit to the Real World, your go-to source for reliable information on D3 athletics recruiting & admissions.
Today we are sharing our favorite Scholarship resources on the internet.
We found most of these while writing Scholarship Sunday, a weekly series where we shared resources & upcoming scholarships to help future D3 Athletes pay less for college.
The others we heard about from our followers on social media or from readers like you.
Let’s get into it!
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The Top Scholarship Resources
We spent 15 weeks researching college Scholarships and learned a ton. One of the big takeaways is we didn’t love using the big name sites to find awards.
For one, they often make you create an account just to search which is annoying. But what’s worse is their search results are filled with a bunch of irrelevant items or things that feel like ads.
So instead, we prioritized sites that did not require users to create a log-in or push a lottery like “no essay scholarship” sweepstakes.
If you’re curious, we compiled what we learned in this post on our website:
We also asked our followers on X (Twitter) to weigh in and incorporated their thoughts.
Think we missed something worth sharing? Respond to this email to let us know. We read all replies!
CareerOneStop
When people ask us where they should start their scholarship search, we always provide the same answer: CareerOneStop’s Scholarship Finder
This is our favorite (and we’d argue the most reliable) site to find scholarships (@Career1stop on Twitter). It is run by the U.S. Department of Labor and last time we checked their site they had 1053 available awards for those aiming to get a Bachelor’s Degree in the U.S.
There’s a ton to like with the site. First of all, it is completely FREE! Second it has really intuitive search tools so you can make the results as relevant to you as possible. It even has a feature for international students looking to study in the U.S.
Once you apply your search criteria, you can also sort by things like award size and how soon the application is due. In the picture below we filtered for scholarships for U.S. students who want to get a Bachelor’s degree in the U.S. and then sorted on soonest deadlines.
Smart Scholar
We liked using Smart Scholar for their state by state resources.
They don’t go as in depth as we did when we covered resources for every U.S. state with a D3 school, but it is one of the better pre-sorted pages we’ve seen online.
When looking for scholarship money it’s so important to start local and understand what your state can offer you. That’s why we love this option from Smart Scholar.
We also encourage you to get offline and go out into your community to see what is available. One of our followers who used to work as a college admissions counselor offered this advice:
XollegePass
We found this one recently via Substack’s Notes feature and have appreciated it.
They’re constantly posting upcoming scholarship deadlines, both big and small, that could be helpful for prospective D3 athletes.
Plus they help students in the scholarship search and seem to have some pretty impressive results to show for it. Check them out and let us know what you think.
BigFuture by College Board
If you're already stressing about the SAT or FAFSA, you might as well use College Board’s best free tool.
Why it's great:
✅ It’s legit — backed by the same org behind the SAT
✅ Tons of vetted scholarships (over 23,000!)
✅ Syncs with your college planning profileWhat makes it different:
You get scholarship matches based on your college list, major, and background, not just your GPA or zip code.
D3Direct
You’ve made it this far, so it’s time for some shameless self-promotion.
We’ve compiled a bevy of D3-specific financial aid and scholarship resources on our website. This includes the results of a state by state series we did covering financial aid resources for every U.S. state that has a D3 school.
Thanks for Reading!
Bookmark these scholarship sites. Check them weekly. Apply often.
And remember: Free money favors the consistent 💵
See you next week,
— D3Direct
Helping you play smart and pay smart