Peterson’s Scholarship Search Review (73/100)

Peterson’s is perhaps best known as a publisher of educational materials, including test prep books and guides to colleges, financial aid, and careers. 

Besides their print and online publications, they also offer a modern, easy-to-use scholarship search tool, which scored 73 out of 100 across our metrics. This can be accessed without having to create a profile, which may be a plus for students who prefer to search for scholarships by keywords. The search results can be filtered by award amount, major, state of residence, gender, and more. 

There are also grants, prizes, fellowships, and forgivable loans listed. In addition to its scholarship search tool, Peterson’s offers numerous resources for students who are in the process of choosing a college, as well as those planning to attend grad school.

Peterson’s scored very highly for their total pool of funding, which is $10 billion, spread across nearly 2 million scholarships from over 4,000 scholarship providers. However, nearly all of these opportunities can also be accessed through other platforms such as Sallie Mae or Chegg. 

Peterson’s does offer a $2,500 “World’s Easiest Scholarship,” although that seems to be the only unique opportunity on the database. Students can create a profile in order to save scholarships and colleges to a favorites list, although this doesn’t actually help them find scholarship matches or complete scholarship applications. 

The scholarship search tool is entirely free to use, although the Peterson’s website contains many additional test prep resources that can be purchased. Students are likely to see targeted ads on the Peterson’s website, and it appears that the information collected by Peterson’s may be shared with third parties and other advertisers.