ScholarSpring

Forty percent of families use no scholarship money at all, and most who never apply say the same thing: they didn't know what they were eligible for. The bigger pile is federal.

$4.4 billion in Pell went unclaimed

The ladder runs in order: FAFSA, Pell, state, then scholarships

That's what the class of 2024 left on the table through incomplete FAFSAs alone. Families don't need another list — they need to know which dollars are actually theirs, and in what order. ScholarSpring walks the whole ladder biggest-dollars-first: file the FAFSA, claim the Pell, add state grants before they run out, then stack scholarships on top, matched by hard eligibility blockers so a student only sees awards they can actually win. A funding plan shows the real gap — cost minus aid — and tracks applications and deadlines until it closes.

834 awards, each checked by hand

Every award confirmed on the sponsor's own site, refreshed monthly with dead links retired — against competitors advertising 240,000 scraped listings a counselor can't trust. The pipeline refreshes itself monthly with human sign-off.

The profile never leaves the phone

The catch in this category: every major "free" scholarship site pays for itself by selling student data — the founder of the biggest one is currently suing its lender-owner over exactly that. ScholarSpring's profile stays on the device: never uploaded, never sold, never shown to an advertiser. The architecture can't sell what it never collects. Counselors get opt-in aggregate stats only — "34 of your 210 seniors filed the FAFSA" — never an individual student's data.

Students never pay

The lights stay on the way sponsored financial education has worked for two decades: a sponsor's name on a tool that costs them little and means a lot. A regional bank or foundation with CRA-eligible reach into low- and moderate-income households; college-access programs like GEAR UP and AVID on per-cohort licenses; schools and districts once aggregate reporting ships. Never ads targeted on student data, never lender placement, never a per-student bounty. The web app is live today and the iOS app is in TestFlight.