CollegeXpress Site Review

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http://www.collegexpress.com

This site allows you to conduct a scholarship search with or without building a Profile. We decided to take it for a spin using both methods. Click first on “Scholarship Search” under Tools at the bottom of the page. This permits the user to search by keywords or by academic filters. We entered “Women” and clicked the SEARCH NOW button. We received 353 results that provided the scholarship name, funding organization, and deadline. Hovering over the scholarship name opens a pop-up window that provides a few scholarship details, but if you click on the scholarship name (instead of hovering), a new page opens giving all the details and links you’ll need. However, this window is obscured by the pop-up box telling you that you need to be signed into your CollegeXpress account to view the details. We clicked the big REGISTER NOW button and were sent directly to the “Complete Your Profile” page. All fields are required (note the red asterisks *). We provided our name, email, password, birth date, country, and selected student (over parent). Before you click the JOIN! Button, you can choose the “Opt-Out” link to dodge the emails from colleges and “promotions from top companies.” Even after clicking the Opt-Out link, they make one more attempt to gain your permission to contact you by email. You’ll need to uncheck the boxes as the default is set for opting-in. Make your choice then click the JOIN! button.

The new page of “Complete Your Profile” now asks you to enter your mailing address, home phone, gender, race, high school and graduation year, and your GPA. Your SAT and ACT test results are requested but not required. However, if you have them and especially if you scored well, we suggest you enter them in the academic fields. We chose to leave them blank to research this site’s search engine results. Click the SUBMIT button.

The new page you see is one big ad. Unless you’re interested in being contacted by the organizations and colleges listed, just skip right to the SUBMIT button. The page changes but continues on building your student Profile. It asks you about your top college choices, majors, sports, and religion. Only the Preferred Major field is required. Once again, entering detailed information increases the number of scholarships matching your answers.

Next, is a series of questions asking about the military and attending college overseas. You can answer “Yes” or “No.” Bear in mind that if you answer yes, you are passively agreeing to be contacted by email, phone, or mail. Then click SUBMIT.

The last page of your Profile will ask you again for school selections. There is no opting-out here but you do get to choose specific schools or schools by location or “all.” We chose “Northeast” because we’re based in Vermont and were shown a list of schools. We found the list limited at best. Now, Vermont is a small state, but it definitely has more than 2 colleges. We chose the two for Vermont and a random assortment of schools in the region then clicked ALL DONE!

The page now brings up a full-page ad for their featured sponsor school, which will not necessarily be in the region you selected. We clicked NO THANKS.

We were presented with the details of 1 scholarship that had a stated preference for those who joined their organization. Below the scholarship is a search box that says “type anything, we got it…” with a SEARCH button below. Beneath the button is a list of 3 scholarship links offered by the same organization. We tried clicking on these links and they work but force you to view scholarships one at a time, in the order presented by this website. We abandoned this as too time consuming. So we went back up to the scholarships search box and typed “women.” This brought back 353 results…the SAME 353 results we found when we chose NOT to complete a Profile. We ran the search again using “Women Undergraduate” and had 29 results returned and 22 of those required that you attend a specific school. This left 7 results to check out in detail, which you can easily complete in one sitting.

Our advice is to skip the personal information sharing required to build your Profile and conduct your search using the “Scholarship Search” link on the bottom of their Home Page instead. You don’t need to create an account in order to search again using the same or different keywords. If you want to save your search results, you are required to register and complete a Profile.

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