Sites to Kick Off Your Scholarship Search

1. Scholarships.com:The free scholarship search is one of the most established and robust, tracking a reported $19 billion in scholarships. “It’s basically like an eHarmony site for money,” says Elizabeth Hartley, an independent education consultant and owner of Scholarship Gold Consulting. After you fill out a profile, the site will use your criteria to filter through all scholarships to generate a short list.

2. Fastweb.com:Fastweb, owned by parent company Monster.com, is also a free scholarship search provider that claims to have more than 1.5 million scholarships in its database. Like scholarships.com, the site will find scholarships in its database and email you matches, deadlines and newsletters.

3. Chegg.com:Chegg is a textbook website that has a scholarship search function, offering more than 25,000 scholarships. The site also offers online tutors to help students with their scholarship essays.

4. Cappex.com:Cappex allows students to search both schools and scholarships, with a database of more than $11 billion in scholarships. A proprietary calculator also allows students to gauge their chances of getting into prospective schools with user-generated data.

5. JLV College Counseling:Jessica Velasco, a former admissions officer, started JLV College Counseling, which offers information on various scholarships. Velasco also posts scholarships every Saturday on her Facebook page with upcoming application deadlines. Via her blog, Velasco offers scholarship and college admissions tips and advice.

6. The College Board:The College Board’s comprehensive BigFuture site helps students look up information about colleges and how to pay for school. Its scholarships search engine provides information on more than $6 billion in scholarships, financial aid and internships.

7. Niche.com:On Niche.com, students can gain a sense of each school's "personality," Hartley says, by reading student reviews. They can also search for scholarships. Niche pairs students with the scholarships that match their qualifications, with student-friendly categories like no-essay scholarships.

8. College BoardScholarship: The College Board Opportunity Scholarships offer nearly $5 million each year to reward your efforts to plan and pay for college.

9. Nitro: Nitro cares about providing you the resources needed to successfully navigate financing college. They know that college is a big step forward in achieving your goals and want to help you get there using all the tools Nitro has to offer.

10. Access Scholarships: Finding Scholarships can be hard, Access Scholarships is here to guide you through your search.