We’ve put together a great list of 20 no essay scholarships below. But we’ll also show how you can find a ton more scholarships with no essay writing required on your own without a ton of work. Put another way, in this article, we’re giving you a fish and teaching you to fish. A double whammy.
Just because you need money for college doesn’t mean you want to sit down and write hundreds of tedious essays on the importance of flossing or how crucial it is to use the right brand of motor oil, all for a tiny chance at maybe getting a scholarship.
Luckily, there are literally thousands of scholarships you don’t need to write an essay for out there. Most of them exist to try to get teens to spread cheap advertising about a product or a brand. It’s a little underhanded, but since they’re passing out the money, why not take advantage of it?
No Essay Scholarships That Aim for Cheap Marketing
The Niche $2,000 No Essay Scholarship is a great place to start.
We spoke with Kevin Ladd, Vice President of top scholarships search site Scholarships.com about scholarships with no essays.
“There’s one no essay scholarship on our site that’s a marketing scholarship, let’s put it that way. They pay us to drive traffic to their website. There are quite a few smaller businesses now that do this. The big companies like Coca Cola or Dell have these big not for profits that they set up and they offer tons of scholarships, millions of dollars. But then there’s these not as big companies that say, you know what, we offer scholarships, we don’t get as much traffic as Scholarships.com, can we list our scholarships on your website and then we’ll pay you on a cost-per-click basis to drive traffic to our website. That’s the niche for the first no essay scholarship I’m going to tell you about, and it’s actually called “The No Essay Scholarship.” It does really well because it has “no essay” right in the name.”
The Doodle 4 Google no essay scholarship awards $30,000 for the best Google doodle for Google’s home page.
There are a lot of scholarships that don’t require an essay. Students who want to find no essay scholarships should do a scholarships search with an online tool or app, then look at each description. Cross off all the scholarships that say they need an essay and what’s left is all the no essay scholarships.
“That would leave me with a list of no essay scholarships,” says Ladd. “Then I’d just go through and apply to all the ones that don’t require an essay.
Some scholarships require essays, but some require video and some don’t require anything but an online registration. Scholarships.com even has an iPhone app to make the search for no essay scholarships even easier.
Scholarships.com’s scholarships search app can help make you a no essay scholarship getting ninja.
No Essay Scholarships That Aim for Social Media Exposure
A lot of other no essay scholarships are trying to get social media exposure or go viral in some way, so they’ll create contests where a student does something that’s very easy to do. Then the student shares it on Facebook or Twitter and mentions the sponsor of the no essay scholarship.
“Those again are typically more marketing style scholarships,” says Ladd, but there’s nothing wrong with it. They’re offering the money. It’s legit. Yeah, they’re benefiting from it, it’s a capitalistic endeavor for certain but I don’t have a problem with that. As long as they’re helping to support Scholarships.com to offer free scholarships to students.
20 Great No Essay Scholarships
Below we have compiled a list of 20 great no essay scholarships. Some require a video, one requires a speech and some require nothing more than filling out an online form. There are literally thousands of other no essay scholarships out there, with some expiring and new ones popping up all the time. Therefore, as Ladd says, the best way to find them is to do an online search with a free scholarships search tool like Scholarships.com. That said, the list of no essay scholarships below should get you started.
| No Essay Scholarship | Max Amount | Description |
| The Niche $2,000 No Essay Scholarship | $2,000 | Just fill out an online form and you could win a $2,000 0 no essay scholarship |
| CollegeWeek Live Scholarship | $1,000 | Sign up and visit colleges while logged in and you might win this $1,000 no essay scholarship. |
| Unigo $10,000 Scholarship | $10,000 | Give a short answer to an easy question online and you could win this $10,000 scholarship. |
| CollegeXpress Scholarship | $10,000 | Register online for a chance to win this $10,000 no essay scholarship. |
| Doodle 4 Google | $30,000 | Create a doodle for the Google home page for a chance at this no essay scholarship. |
| The Chegg $2,000 Summer Scholarship | $2,000 | Take two minutes to complete a sentence and you could win a $2,000 no essay scholarship. |
| Cappex Monthly Scholarship | $1,000 | Fill in the online form for a chance at this no essay scholarship. |
| Love Your Body Poster Contest | $350 | Create a poster that counteracts the media’s unrealistic view of women’s bodies. |
| The Scholarships.com “Tell a Friend” $1,000 Sweepstakes | $1,000 | Tweet, email, IM or share their referral link on Facebook and you get a chance to win a $1,000 no essay award. |
| National Ten Minute Play Contest | $1,000 | Applicants to this no essay scholarship must write a script for a stage play no more than ten pages in length. |
| AFA Teens Video Competition | $500 | Create a two minute video about Alzheimer’s disease for a chance to win this no essay scholarship. |
| Natural Disaster PSA Video Contest | $3,000 | Create a brief video PSA about hiring a contractor in the wake of a natural disaster for a chance at this no essay scholarship. |
| American Legion National High School Oratorical Contest | $18,000 | Give an award winning speech on the Constitution of the United States to win this no essay scholarship. |
| Poster Contest for High School Students | $1,000 | Create a poster based on the idea that one person can make a difference and you might win this no essay scholarship. |
| Girls Impact the World Film Festival Greenis Award | $2,500 | Make a 3-5 minute film about the environment and girls for a chance to win this no essay scholarship. |
| Californians for Population Stabilization | $5,000 | Make a short video related to population stabilization and you might win this $5,000 no essay scholarship. |
| Chris Meyer Memorial French Scholarship | Full Tuition | This no essay scholarship is open to students aged 14-18 who excel at French language and culture. |
| Create Real Impact | $1,500 | Convey a solution to distracted or reckless driving through use of video, music, art or creative writing and you might win this no essay scholarship. |
| IFWE Student Video Contest | $5,000 | Create a three minute video about God or helping the poor for a chance to win this no essay scholarship. |
| The U.S Bank Scholarship | $5,000 | Complete eight “Financial Genius for Life” online personal finance learning modules. |
Do an Online Scholarships Search to Find More No Essay Scholarships
There are tons of interesting no essay scholarships out there. But again if you do a scholarships search with an online search tool like Scholarships.com and you start looking through the descriptions, you’ll see right off whether there’s an essay required, and if you don’t want to do an essay just cross off those scholarships that require an essay.
The Agnes M. Lindsay scholarship is a no essay scholarship open only to students from rural areas in Massachusetts. There are thousands of local scholarships out there that make using a scholarships search tool or app crucial.
One of the biggest reasons to use an online search tool or an app to find no essay scholarships is that a ton of scholarships are local. Relying only on a list of 20 or 100 no essay scholarships like our list above won’t unlock all the no essay scholarships that are only available to people in your town, your county, or who have the same color eyes as you or share your passion for diet Hotpockets.
“The only reason I tell people to use Scholarships.com to do a scholarships search to look for no essay scholarships is not to be self-promotional,” says Ladd. “It’s because it’s the only tool I know backward and forward. But there are a lot of free scholarships search sites and I’m not going to promote those but I’m not going to dissuade anyone from using them either. But you can use more than one. When I buy a car, I’m going to buy one car because I have to pay for it, but if they were free I’d just have tons of cars because I would just want to drive a different one every day. The point being, you may not have any money, but it doesn’t matter because you can easily go to five different scholarships search sites for information and they might all be useful. I think ours is the best but I might be a little biased.”
The scholarships that you don’t have to write essays for are out there. Start with our list of 20 no essay scholarships above to whet your appetite, but definitely use an online search tool to find a lot more.