Skills / Scholarship search
Scholarship search
Find scholarships the person can win. Big databases plus the local awards most people miss, in a deadline tracker. Use when they say "find me scholarships", "how do I pay for college", or "are there scholarships for someone like me".
Use this skill. Nothing to install.
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Watch the first two minutes
This is how a session goes when the money looks impossible. Click through it.
Scripted example of a real session.
People like me don't win these
The famous national awards draw enormous applicant pools, which is exactly why this skill spends most of its effort where the pools are small: your county's community foundation, civic groups, the credit union, your parents' employers and unions, and the counselor's list almost nobody asks for. For every candidate it opens the page and checks eligibility line by line against your real profile, and it discards the near-misses out loud so you learn to read the lines yourself. Scholarship money goes to people who apply in volume, so the last thing it sets up is a recurring slot on your calendar to keep working the list.
What you end up with
A tracker where every row is an award you actually qualify for, verified live, sorted by the date that matters. Here is one a few weeks in.
- Verified this session. Awards die and deadlines move, so nothing enters the tracker without a working URL and a deadline read from the official page. A tracker with dead entries costs you real deadlines.
- The longest-lead item moved first. Recommendation letters need weeks, so that request went out the day the tracker was built, worked backwards from the deadline.
- The hobby line paid off. Local and niche awards have small applicant pools, and the skill's own math is blunt about it: a $500 award with twelve applicants beats a national one with twelve thousand.
- Near-misses die out loud. Each discard names the exact line that failed, so reading eligibility becomes a skill you keep.
Questions people actually ask
Will it write my scholarship essays?
No, and it will not fill in your applications either. You draft the essay; it annotates what works, what is vague, and where the prompt is not being answered, and you revise. The skill's job is the machine around you: finding, verifying, and organizing.
Are these scholarships even real?
That is the skill's first rule. Nothing goes in the tracker unless the page was opened live during the session, with the deadline read from the official source. Anything it cannot verify gets dropped.
I'm not a straight-A student. Is there anything for me?
Plenty of awards are not graded on GPA at all: they weight need, locality, service, a family situation, a specific hobby, or membership in a group. That is why the session starts with a real profile and why the local pass matters most.
Do I have to share personal family details?
Only what you choose to. The skill asks what you would rather not disclose and skips those award categories without pressure. More profile means more matches, but the line is yours to draw.
Is this free?
The skill is free, no account, no catch. The agent you paste it into may or may not be: Gemini has the widest free tier, Copilot's free tier is enough to try it, ChatGPT and Claude free plans can also run it in a chat.
Where to go from here
The rest of the college machine:
The money side, beyond scholarships:
Curious? Read the full skill — the exact instructions your agent gets
--- name: scholarship-search category: school description: Find scholarships the person can win. Big databases plus the local awards most people miss, in a deadline tracker. Use when they say "find me scholarships", "how do I pay for college", or "are there scholarships for someone like me". --- # scholarship-search Find money for a student's education, and it has to be real money: named awards with live pages, current deadlines, and eligibility they actually meet. The artifact is a tracker — every qualifying scholarship with its deadline, requirements, and status — plus a checklist for the first application they will submit. The essays and forms are theirs to write; you find, verify, and organize. ## Rule zero: verified and theirs Never list a scholarship you have not looked up live this session — awards close, deadlines move, and a tracker with inactive entries costs them real deadlines. Every entry needs a working URL and a deadline read from the official page. And you do not write their scholarship essays or fill their applications; you build the machine around them and give feedback on drafts they wrote. Treat every listing as a possible scam until the sponsor and official domain are verified. Never pay to apply, buy a service to unlock an award, or share a password, bank detail, government identity number, or tax document during the search. Database accounts stay with the student. If the student is a minor, involve a parent, guardian, or school counselor before an application requests sensitive information. ## Profile Eligibility is the whole game, so get the real profile: state and town, school year and GPA (roughly is fine), intended field if known, family situations that unlock awards (first-generation, military family, specific heritage, disability, single parent), activities, jobs, and anything unusual — obscure hobbies and small towns have scholarships attached. Ask what they would rather not disclose and skip those categories without pressure. ## Search wide, then local Search current reputable databases and the official state or national aid agency for their location. Read the privacy policy before creating an account or supplying profile details. Then do the pass most people skip — local: - Their school counselor's scholarship list, if one exists — ask them to get it; it is usually the highest-hit-rate document. - Community foundations for their county and city. - Local civic groups: Rotary, Lions, Elks, chambers of commerce, credit unions, utility companies, their parents' employers and unions. - Awards attached to their specific colleges, if a college list exists. Local awards have small applicant pools; a $500 award with twelve applicants beats a national one with twelve thousand. For every candidate, open the page and check eligibility line by line against the profile. Discard near-misses out loud so they learn the pattern. ## Tracker and first application Build the tracker as a spreadsheet or table they keep — one row per scholarship: name, URL, amount, deadline, requirements (essay prompt, recommendations, transcript), status, and notes. Do not put login, identity, tax, or banking details in the tracker. Sort by deadline. Then pick the nearest good one and build its checklist together: every required document, who has to provide it, and the date each is needed by, working back from the deadline. Recommendation letters need weeks of lead time — get that request drafted and sent today (the email-a-professor skill covers it). If an essay is required, they draft it; you annotate. ## Done - A tracker with only verified, qualifying scholarships, sorted by deadline - The first application's checklist started, with the longest-lead item (usually a recommendation request) already in motion - A recurring time on their calendar to work the list, because scholarship money goes to people who apply in volume Revisit each term: eligibility changes with grade year, and the databases refresh. Also confirm the FAFSA is filed — many awards require it, and it is the single largest lever on the whole page.