A big part of the college process for most families is finding a way to pay for the cost of tuition, room and board, meals, books, travel, and other expenses. If the total cost of college isn't terrifying enough, the search and application process for scholarships certainly is daunting, to say the least. Most colleges will offer merit scholarships to students just for applying to college and getting accepted, but for the majority of students, there is still a gap that needs to be met, and financial aid does not usually cover all of that. So because of that, most students are forced to sift through hundreds of outside scholarships, find out which ones they are eligible for and then spend hours completing the scholarship application, often requiring a ton of personal information and writing samples.
This hard work often can result in receiving free money to use toward's college expenses, but in general, the entire process is arduous, time consuming, and students often give-up before they really even begin. I hear about this frustration all of the time, that is why I was excited to have the opportunity to talk with Charlie Maynard, the co-founder of Going Merry , which is an online platform that makes it extremely easy to search and apply for scholarships, all in one place, basically making it the CommonApp of scholarship hunting.
So what makes Going Merry so useful? When it comes down to it, it just makes everything so much easier...and here is why:
- Students make a profile once, and then the platform will auto fill the student's information for any future scholarship applications
- Students can apply directly to multiple scholarships, never leaving the main Going Merry website
- Every application has an estimated completion time and difficulty level, which helps students prioritize them
- Scholarships are grouped by essay to help minimize the amount of essays students need to write
- Going Merry will help match scholarships to students they are right for
- It is all free!
Going Merry is a very new organization, but they already have reviewed and approved close to a thousand scholarships, which can now be found (and applied to) on their website. I hope this can help and best of luck with the search!
Joseph D. Korfmacher