If we say college has never been more expensive, we’re not using hyperbole. The costs of college continue to outpace incomes, projected incomes, and the cost of virtually everything else in the United States.
Paying for college becomes consistently harder, particularly as students are nickelled and dimed into mountains of debt. Tuition might only be $3,000 a year, but a $500 lab fee here and a $250 sports and activities fee there combined with all the other administrative costs send your total bill spiraling out of control.
Although today’s conversation revolves around financial aid and who should pay the student’s share, scholarships remain more relevant than ever. Scholarships are monetary awards that often come with no strings attached. Once you’ve earned one, you don’t need to pay it back.
Unfortunately, scholarships and associated programs tend to be time-consuming, which is problematic for a demographic already short on free time. Moreover, many of the most lucrative programs cater to people who started planning for their college experience while they were still in preschool.
ScholarshipPoints isn’t one of these programs. At ScholarshipPoints, your chances of winning depend not on your grades or essay writing skills but your willingness to participate in surveys and give up personal data. Participating in marketing activities earns you points and gives you an even higher chance of winning a $1,000 or even $10,000 scholarship.
Does it sound too good to be true? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about ScholarshipPoints.com and how it might work for you.
What Is Scholarship Points?
ScholarshipPoints is a membership program to provide college students a chance to win scholarships through a points-based program. The company has continuously provided scholarships to students and prospective students since 2006. Its owners, Edvisors Network Inc., are based in the United States and provide a publicly listed address and number.
How Does It Work?
You can join ScholarshipPoints if you’re over age 13 and are either presently enrolled or about to register at a U.S. higher education institution. ScholarshipPoints is also open to U.S. residents only.
To sign up, you’ll provide your name, contact information, age, and year in school.
Once you’re in the program, you begin earning points by completing specific activities related to consumer marketing. There are many ways to get points including:
- Taking surveys
- Reading blogs or articles about the college experience
- Chiming in on social media pages
- Visiting a preferred partner website
- Opening ScholarshipPonts.com emails
- Participating in contest
- Playing games and completing puzzles.
After completing each activity, you receive a set number of points. Every point qualifies you for one entry for a scholarship.
Scholarships may be provided by ScholarshipPoints or by partners. You get to choose what awards interest you most or what restrictions apply to you.
In some cases, you’ll even earn points by entering to win scholarships. Who doesn’t want to win money by entering to win money?
How Many Scholarships Are Available?
ScholarshipsPoints hands out three x $1,000 scholarships monthly and a quarterly $10,000 scholarship.
You’ll always find the current scholarship list on the Enter Scholarships page. You’ll see the name of the scholarship along with the amount, provider, and the date of the drawing.
How Does ScholarshipPoints Select Winners?
Every time you earn a point, you receive an entry ticket for a scholarship. When you spend a point on a drawing, the computer generates an entry for you into the contest. Using more of them creates more entries and increases your chances of winning.
Every scholarship has an end date posted on the website. On that day, the company’s computer algorithm chooses a random winner.
How Do You Know If You’ve Won?
ScholarshipPoints requires a phone number during account creation so that the team has a fast way of contacting scholarship winners.
Winners receive a phone call from ScholarshipPoints, but once the call comes in, the countdown clock begins. Winners have three business days to respond to the request and acknowledge their winnings.
If you fail to respond to the notification within three days, you lose access to the scholarship. Once the original winner becomes disqualified, the computer selects a new alternate winner. The computers continue to choose new winners until someone officially claims the prize.
Do I Get the Money from ScholarshipPoints?
No, all the money gets sent to your school’s financial aid office.
That’s why all members of ScholarShip points need to be enrolled or about to enroll in a college. If you win and aren’t a prospective or current college student, you’ll lose out on the scholarship.
Don’t worry about losing the money. ScholarshipPoints asks for your student number to better match the scholarship with your school financial aid account. If you don’t have a student number, they ask you for the last four digits of your SSN to match your I.D. with the money.
What if I’m still in high school or even middle school? High schoolers can still participate in ScholarshipPoints. Instead of sending your winnings to a college financial aid office, Scholarship Points sends your money to a qualified 529 college savings plan.
What Makes Scholarship Points Unique?
In our opinion, two things make the ScholarshipPoints program unique:
- Funding sources
- Content provided
Keep reading to find out why we consider these things are unique in the scholarship world.
Funding Sources—Where They Get the Money for Scholarships
ScholarshipPoints is unique in the way it generates funding. While some criticism suggests that the program is a scam, its funding scheme both makes sense for pay-outs and provides a simple payment system.
The basic premise of ScholarshipPoints generates personal data for companies to create marketing leads. These leads are valuable, and because you’re participating willingly, you’re more likely to be honest, which means the leads are even more valuable.
ScholarshipPoints is a data mining site that generates revenue on the information you provide willingly. It’s a conventional business model across the internet generally because most sites earn advertising revenue based on the data you voluntarily or inadvertently offer during your visit.
However, it is a unique proposition for a scholarship reward scheme because the company offers to share the data with you.
Ultimately, there’s little difference between ScholarshipPoints and taking surveys as part of a rewards program to earn more points. The most significant difference is in the chance factor: you might take dozens or hundreds of polls without winning. As long as you’re willing to put in the time and accept the risk that you might not receive a reward.
Some say that the system isn’t unique for scholarships, and in a way they’re right. It’s not uncommon for scholarship programs to offer a points system used to select finalists from the list applicants.
The difference between those programs and Scholarship points is that the site doesn’t worry about merit. Everyone’s points are equally weighted. Converting more points into entries grows your chances, but it’s still possible to win with one drawing.
Curated Content
A second unique value proposition lies in the resources ScholarshipPoints.com offers. On its face, the blog isn’t unusual. Many sites run a blog to boost its ranking in search engine algorithms.
However, the resources provided on the ScholarshipPoints website are valuable to prospective and current students. The team commissions blog posts from college students across the United States and offer content like:
- Academic advice
- Paying for college
- Educational benefits
- Learning resources
- Lifestyle pieces
Ultimately, you’ll find that ScholarshipPoints isn’t just a marketing system – they also care for students and their concerns about classes, careers, and funding.
Does Scholarship Points Cost Money?
No, ScholarshipPoints is a free program. At no point will the company ask for money, bank details, or any other financial data.
Some survey questions may ask about your financial situation, income, or tuition costs, but those questions don’t impact your ability to participate in the scholarship program.
What Do People Think of Scholarship Points
Enter “ScholarshipPoints” into your search engine, and you’ll inevitably get multiple links asking if the program is a scam. Most reputable sites are quick to point out that it isn’t an illegal money-making forum.
The unique funding scheme described above efficiently generates the revenue dispersed while also creating a profit for the ScholarshipPoints team. In reality, you’ve likely encountered plenty of survey sites just like theirs—the only difference is in the form of the payout.
Users of ScholarshipPoints detail their experience across the internet, but one valuable piece of information stands out: create a dedicated email account to use for surveys.
Because you’re participating in endless survey marketing, you’ll receive a corresponding number of emails based on the activities you complete. If you’re active on the site, you may find yourself drowning in emails that obscure your most important messages.
Now, don’t create a throwaway account and forget about it. You’ll need to check it regularly to answer emails in case you win $1,000 for college.
How Scholarship Points Compares to Other Scholarship Programs
ScholarshipPoints offers a limited number of scholarships compared to other sites. It only provides proprietary awards, which includes the three monthly and one quarterly drawing. Other sites like ScholarshipOwl provide access to hundreds of scholarships, and none require a survey.
Of course, no scholarship resource is entirely free. While ScholarshipPoints provides awards that don’t require an essay submission, other sites do. Plus, traditional scholarships rely on test scores, grades, extra-curricular activities and your grades in college.
One of the most significant concerns noted about the program is the probability that you might spend hours completing surveys and throwing your data into the air like confetti without any return. After all, by taking surveys, you provide a service that works to support the entire operation. If you’d prefer to exchange research for cold, hard cash, then you’d benefit more from paid survey sites.
In reality, ScholarshipPoints hands out free points all the time. You’ll get one free entry a month just from the free points given out on social media. Just visiting the site gives you a point.
What We Think
If you have extra time to scroll through Instagram for the tenth time today, then you have time to take a survey for the chance to win a scholarship.
It’s irresponsible to advocate for spending hours every week taking surveys in the hopes of maybe, one day, hopefully winning a scholarship. Still, a few minutes of work while you wait for the bus will only increase your chances of winning.
ScholarshipPoints costs you nothing but time and personal data. You don’t even need to deal with the deluge of emails if you use a separate email account.
Of course, if you’re particularly privacy-conscious or you’d prefer to get something in exchange for your data, this method of entering the drawing won’t work well for you. But what we like about the site is the opportunity to earn points in so many different ways.
Don’t want to fill out surveys? No problem. Interact on Facebook or Twitter instead. Avoiding social media? Follow a prompt to read a blog and earn points that way.
There are so many ways to earn points, and each method is more accessible than the next. Who knows? You could win that thousand dollars without even trying.
The Bottom Line
ScholarshipPoints won’t pay for your degree, but it might pick up the slack where financial aid leaves off.
Because the winnings are scholarships, you don’t need to pay them back, which means anything you win is an interest-free gift. Use it to pay for lab fees, cover a costly credit, or pay off your on-site residence suite. Because the money goes directly to your school, you’ll be sure that you don’t inadvertently spend it on.
Again, privacy-conscious folks should steer clear. And if you don’t have a spare moment, don’t spend it hoping that you’ll win the scholarship lottery. ScholarshipPoints is for anyone who has some free time to putter about on the internet and wants to put it to good use. You might even walk away with $10,000.
