How to Find Scholarships Anyone Can Apply For

How do you find a list of scholarships anyone can apply for? There are thousands upon thousands of scholarships out there. When you need money for school, but you don’t feel like there’s anything extremely special about you that’ll let you win a scholarship in any specific field, it probably makes sense to you to look for those scholarships that are open to everyone.

Most scholarships do have some sort of qualifier. You might think, well I’m not the high school’s starting quarterback, I’m not the chess team captain and I’m not a 5.0 weighted GPA guy, so I won’t qualify for any scholarships. People often think that if they’re not the best at something obvious like that, then they might not qualify for scholarships at all.

Kevin Ladd, vice president at the popular scholarships search site Scholarships.com, has a unique perspective on that idea.

“My response to them would be, no. That’s just not true,” says Ladd. “There’s actually a lot of scholarships that I wouldn’t say anyone could apply for, but that are very broad. They’re very competitive also. When you say anybody, what you’re really saying is, anybody who’s going to be going to school next year. Or even anybody who’s going to be going to school in the next two or three years, because there are some high school juniors or high school sophomores that the scholarships will be put into escrow or in some other way the money will be saved until it’s needed.”

So those scholarships anyone can apply for are definitely out there. Now, because anyone can apply for them, a ton of people are actually going to apply for them and that means they’re going to be super competitive. But every kind of scholarship imaginable is out there. Sometimes there are several of a certain kind of scholarship or even dozens or hundreds or thousands, depending on the topic. Scholarships that are open to anyone are no exception.

How to Find Scholarships Anyone Can Apply For

scholarships anyone can apply forOne way you could find scholarships anyone can apply for is via an online scholarships search tool like Scholarships.com (or any other scholarships search site). You could only enter the minimal amount of information required about who you are as a student and who you are as a person. Then you could look at the list of scholarships that comes back.

Those scholarships that you’re going to see when you don’t really answer a lot of questions are going to be the scholarships almost anyone can apply for.

Yes, You Can Search for Scholarships Anyone Can Apply For, but Should You?

“I guess my natural inclination is not to do that” says Ladd, in response to opening up the search that wide “because I feel like if I have a 3.5 GPA and I enter that, then I’ll see those scholarships that someone with a 0.1 GPA could qualify for, but I’ll also see the ones I qualify for specifically. That doesn’t really answer the question, how do I find scholarships anyone can apply for, but it does answer the better question of, how can I get the best results?”

So, the way to find the most scholarships that you in particular will qualify for is to actually do the opposite of throwing open the search.

This might seem counter-intuitive. But if you use a scholarships search tool like it’s intended and answer as many questions about yourself as possible, you’ll get a subset of all the different scholarships, but you’ll be sure you qualify for every scholarship on that list, because it’s based on information you’ve provided about your specific situation.

 

…But if You Really Insist on Seeing the List of Scholarships Anyone Can Apply For…

If you really want to find the scholarships anyone can apply for, you might also try to go into the search tool and tell it you have a 0.1 GPA and supply information that makes you seem as generic as possible. That way instead of narrowing down your options, you’ll get the broadest list of scholarships possible.

scholarships anyone can apply for money

However, even searching for scholarships that only require a 0.1 GPA or better might not give you the broadest list of scholarships possible. That’s because there are ranges. In some cases your GPA might be too good for some scholarships.

“It’s like being overqualified for a job for example,” says Ladd. “You’re overeducated and they don’t think you’re going to stick around or you’re going to get bored because you’re overqualified. Especially in college recruiting they’ll have ranges. Because some schools will say, we’re not going to try to get the 4.5 people because we’re right next to a bunch of schools that are going to get them anyway. We’re not going to waste our time pursuing them because they’re just going to end up going to a competing school that has a higher bar and that’s more prestigious. So we’re going to shoot for those middle of the road students, those average students, and when we’re recruiting, we might not even seek out someone who has a 35 ACT. Some scholarships might be the same. There might be some scholarships that say, you know what? There are a lot of scholarships for people with a 4.0. We’re going to offer one where the most you can have is a 3.5 or a 3.2 or whatever.”

So really, searching for those scholarships anyone can apply for is a bit of a waste of time. What you really want to do is conduct a simple search with an online scholarships search tool. Enter all the details about yourself and your exact situation and interests and goals that you can think of. The search tool will then match you to only those scholarships that you specifically are qualified for. That way you don’t have to waste your time looking through a long list of scholarships that you may or may not be able to get. You’ll save a lot of time that you can use for the important work of winning scholarships and paying for your college education.