‘No Essay’ College Scholarships May Have Unseen Strings Attached

Looking for a college scholarship and finding sites offering easy, “no essay” applications? Beware. Applicants may not realize that they are trading their personal information for what is essentially a raffle ticket.

Unlike traditional scholarships, no-essay prizes often aren’t based on a student’s academic record or other accomplishments. Rather, they are awarded by random drawings, with the odds of winning dependent on how many students apply. The private student lender Sallie Mae, for instance, offers monthly no-essay scholarships of $2,000 through its Scholly search site. The official rules describe the process as a “sweepstakes.”

The same language appears in the rules for no-essay scholarships on other scholarship matching sites, including ScholarshipOwl — which is upfront in estimating, for those who click through to online rules, that the odds of winning are about one in 140,000.

Why offer drawings for scholarships? Online applications can serve as “lead generators” for products like private student loans, said Mark Kantrowitz, a financial-aid expert who years ago helped develop early scholarship-search and financial-aid websites.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/your-money/no-essay-college-scholarships.html