Sources of Money 6: SchoolSoup a New Scholarship Search Engine

On Tuesdays we review a source of financial aid available to help you pay for college

I recently received an email from School Soup Scholarships asking why we never mentioned them as a source of financial aid. The simple truth was that I had never heard of them before. Since that time, we have shared School Soup with several students seeking financial aid. They reported good results. So, based on their experience, we share SchoolSoup.com.

Advantages of School Soup

www.SchoolSoup.com offers services similar to other search engines. They state:

“The SchoolSoup.com website is new but our experience in college and scholarship research is not. We began accumulating college and scholarship information in 1988 and developed one of the first computerized scholarship search programs. We currently have a team of research specialists that add new scholarships to our database every day.

Over the past 18 years our college and scholarship data has been licensed to several Fortune 500 companies on an exclusive basis. For the first time ever our scholarship information is available to the general public free of charge.”

The site seems simple to use. Their profile was easy to complete and updated a list of scholarships. Services include:

• Scholarship matching based on your answers to a profile
• The Careers section offers a free Self-Directed Search career test and links information about careers from the government’s Occupational Outlook
• Lists of public and private colleges sorted by state or major
• Information about federal, private and other student loans
• A nice college comparison tool based on your choices for majors, cost, geography, and test scores
• Articles and tips on how to decide what school to attend, scholarship scams, and more
• Links to scholarships sorted by state, city, for women or minorities, year of study, corporate, or activities (bottom of the home page)
• Helpful, not irritating, emails about new offerings

Cautions about School Soup

Many of the cautions about School Soup repeat what we’ve said before

• Avoid all ads, contests, promotions, and surveys
• Click “No thank you” whenever you see it.

Thursday we discuss how home run statements enhance your reusable master application