Find scholarships to fund your education

What a real scholarship looks like

Legitimate scholarships are funded by universities, governments, foundations, or companies, and awarded based on merit, need, or specific eligibility criteria. A genuine provider will never ask you to pay to be considered, will publish clear eligibility rules and a real institutional website, and will communicate through an official email domain (for example, a university's own @university.edu address, not a free webmail account).

Red flags to watch for

• Any request for payment to "apply," "process," "reserve," or "release" a scholarship. Real scholarships do not charge application fees. Some legitimate programs charge a standard university application fee to the institution itself — that is different from a stranger asking you to wire money to secure a scholarship.
• "You've already won" messages you never applied for. Scholarships are not awarded to people who did not apply.
• Guaranteed results. No legitimate advisor or platform can guarantee you will win a specific scholarship.
• Pressure to act immediately, especially combined with a payment request ("last spot," "expires in 2 hours").
• Requests for sensitive financial information — bank account numbers, card numbers, or a "processing fee" paid by wire transfer or gift card. Legitimate providers never ask for this to consider your application.
• Poor-quality communication: inconsistent institution names, generic email addresses, spelling and grammar errors, or a website that was registered very recently.
• Unsolicited contact through social media or messaging apps from someone claiming to represent a scholarship board.

How to verify a scholarship or provider

• Search for the scholarship name together with the words "scam" or "review."
• Go directly to the provider's official website by typing the address yourself, rather than clicking a link in an unsolicited message, and confirm the scholarship is listed there.
• If a scholarship claims affiliation with a university, contact that university's financial aid or international-students office directly to confirm it's real.
• Check that the contact email matches the institution's own domain, not a free email service.
• Be wary if the only way to "learn more" is to hand over payment details first.

What GrabScholarships does to help

We only publish listings that identify a real, checkable provider, and we do not list opportunities that require an upfront payment to apply. If a listing on our site turns out to be inaccurate or suspicious, please report it — see "Report a problem" on the Trust Center page — so we can review and remove it.

If you think you've been targeted

• Stop responding, and do not send any payment or personal financial information.
• If you have already paid, contact your bank or card provider immediately — they may be able to reverse the charge.
• Report the scam to your local consumer-protection authority (for example, the FTC in the United States, or your country's equivalent) and, if it was impersonating a specific university, to that university directly.
• Let us know if it involved a listing found on GrabScholarships, using the Contact page, so we can investigate and remove it if needed.

A quick summary

If anyone asks you to pay money to receive a scholarship, it is not a real scholarship. When in doubt, verify directly with the institution before you engage further.