Scholly: College Scholarships Reviews

by PlsGiveMeAccessToFunds???

I’m really confused by Scholly...I was so excited to come across a platform that helps match students with scholarship opportunities! However, as a student struggling to finance an education...I cannot afford to pay a monthly fee for a service that *might* or might not help (as many of the reviews suggest it has simply eaten their money with no results, anyway.) Doesn’t this seem counterintuitive, when the money spent on the monthly/annual fees could actually go toward financing one’s education itself??? Sort of funny to target a demographic clearly in need of funds but also make them pay out of pocket when the whole premise is that they likely can’t...not everyone has parents whose pockets they can reach into. I’m disappointed. I get that the developers have to make money to keep this running— if you charged a one-time, up front purchase fee rather than tricking people into downloading a free app that requires a paid subscription to access, you would honestly get enough active downloads/users to keep your app afloat (and improve its actual functionality.) You may think it’s not that deep, but this is a form of elitism, just reinforcing the idea that success on this front still has to be bought. You can’t imagine how disheartening that is.

by Heatherhaze33

I saw this air on Shark Tank. I loved the idea, and am pursuing going back to school myself. Being a former foster youth, female business owner, as well as a veteran on the military - figured this would be a wonderful platform to find a lot of scholarships...

Nope. I opted for the $2.99 monthly charge, and figured it would be a smooth running app. Looks like whatever $$ was put in is long gone, and they are no longer updating Scholly . Not ONE scholarship was generated!! Not only that, Scholly crashes 8 times in the first 20 min trying to set up my profile!! And it’s was EXTREMELY SLOW!! So slow that for each block I tried to fill my would lock itself in the wait time it to to enter in information.

Bottom line, save your $$. Scholly doesn’t work as it was designed to do so - and I’m hoping that $2.99 I spent goes to fixing this for future students who are in need. As is, this was a disappointment and DO not pay $$.

by Zoe Egly

I downloaded Scholly after I heard about it from my high school guidance counselor.

So I download Scholly and FIRST OF ALL, it is sooo confusing to fill out your information and criteria stuff. Scholly gives you 4 categories to fill out, academics, extracurricular, financial and personal. Then you click on each category and it gives you a list of items to select if they apply to you. Like underneath financial, an item could be “Applied for SVCF Managed Scholarship” or “Displaced Homemaker” and so forth. A few of the 4 categories’ item lists literally don’t make any sense in my opinion.

Then I get to the list of matched scholarships. These are scholarships that are incredibly obscure and not professional. For example, I found a “Scholarship Program for Marketing” so I clicked on it and read the paragraph that was attached, and at the bottom it said “To know the topic of the essay or video, email us at ________”.

So I did, and explained that I found them through this app and was eager to apply for the scholarship. TWO WEEKS go by and I never got an email back.

In summary, Scholly is not worth it and a waste of the money they want you to pay for it (subscription) AND your time. I wish I could rate it negative stars but that’s not possible.

by Wife Of A Snorer

I downloaded Scholly and it never worked properly from hour one. Constant glitching, Scholly not opening or Scholly sometimes opened but my phone would freeze and all open apps would crash, my screen would go to the Home Screen and I’d have to give my phone a hard restart just to get the phone working again. I followed the directions on the this app website for IPhone users on how to cancel my subscription and it was canceled within days. When I go to my settings and click on my name it says my this app subscription was canceled in March of 2020. It’s now DECEMBER of 2020 and I just discovered on my bank statement that this app has been making unauthorized charges on my bank account EVERY MONTH for $7.99 since I canceled it back in MARCH! I sent this app an email, a direct message on both Twitter & Instagram and a private message on Facebook. I got a response from Facebook with a link to where this app claims I could cancel my subscription but it was just a broken link that took me nowhere. There is no 800 number to call. This company should be shut down completely, it’s a total disgrace and nothing more than a scam to make unauthorized monthly charges from your bank account with absolutely no way to stop them!

by Dr. KluverBucy

Guy who started it was poor and got $1.3M in scholarships Without Scholly. He created it to be easier for others, but charges subscription fees. Not even a free trial. The developer couldn’t have been his own customer because of the fees—- doesn’t seem like a savior to me, just another businessman trying to make a buck. If they want to help struggling students— help them. Don’t charge them. RESPONSE TO DEVELOPER: Your excuse means nothing. You use cookies to track, make users accept it & then make money off that tracking data. You offer no customer service — proven by your response to several of these concerns and comments, a YEAR LATER. Find your next cash cow— people will see through this soon enough. Shame on you. College is hope for so many & you steal money from those who are vulnerable & looking for help. Lord help you.

by LeftHandedCrow

You guys literally have been stealing my money for a year, if not over a year now. I was using Scholly before it was updated and paid for the membership only to find that a majority of the scholarships were unavailable anymore due to them being outdated. Glad to the the devs actually updating Scholly , but that doesn’t make up for the fact that I’ve unsubscribed from Scholly and there has still been money taken out of my account ever since that day even after attempting to unsubscribe multiple times. I do love the idea and purpose of Scholly but this issue needs to be resolved, I have proof of the transactions and if te devs do reach out and work to resolve the issue with me I will more than gladly remove this comment. Until then I don’t recommend using Scholly unless you want money taken from your account every month for the rest of your life.

by Alfred Leshan

Literally a scam developed to target middle class kids that can barely afford college as it is. Scholly is nothing but marketing tactics to nail people for their money. There’s free services that doe what Scholly claims to. You just have to use a web browser. Scholly is glorified by the “pop culture “ to gain the attention of young middle class kids. Look into it on reddit before being a sucker and paying the sub. They have little intention of helping you financially, only themselves. I mean it was advertised on shark tank for god sakes. That means the entire scam that Scholly is was developed to be incredibly profitable. Aren’t services that are revolutionary in aiding kids supposed to be non-profit????? They use a fraudulent free trial that is tricky to cancel and still tends to bill people after they have canceled because of the terms of service. Nothing but a couple of “Homies” getting rich off of the middle class.

by Itara ✨

I totally get that the developers need to make money. However, when the entire premise is to help those who are financially incapable better afford college, to backstab you’re customers making them PAY for Scholly is ridiculous. You could’ve made people pay for specific features or hell, run non-distracting ads.

I truly was hooked in thought Scholly held great potential, but I am extremely disappointed. ESPECIALLY since NONE of the advertising I saw specified you had to pay to use Scholly . It tricked you into thinking it’s free.

I can’t believe the CEO tried to talk about his humble upbringings of living with a single mom struggling to support her kids only to force his app users to turn into high paying customers for his own profit. What a hypocrite.

by REMLY13

What’s the point of advertising yourself as a free app, when the minute you get past the questions they say you have to subscribe.
Not only that, but they take ALL of your information first, and then turn around to tell you to give them your money or they won’t help you. This is not an even trade at all, I’m giving you something, why is their no return for it?

Further, there are literal laws on this 🙄 that also lay out why you should NOT misrepresent yourself. It’s ridiculous how many apps there are in the AppStore that misrepresent themselves in this same exact way. I can’t wait for someone to get fed up enough with these apps and sue them for this BS.

Also, if you’re goal is to help adults, as well as teenagers/children SAVE money by assisting them with finding scholarships, then WHY are you doing the exact opposite and taken money from them? Obviously if they’re looking for financial assistance, they probably don’t have all that much money

There are better apps out there and sites to get scholarships and grants off of that are free. It’s shooting yourself in the foot to pay for an app like this. It would be smarter for this company to offer a normal, free version, as well as a premium program that maybe unlocks ad-free, higher paying scholarships, fee waiver program, etc

by Christipher DiCesare

I bought Scholly when it first released. Because I paid for it I didn’t have to pay a monthly subscription. I left a comment/review saying as much. The developers reached out to me and offered me something in a link which I stupidly downloaded. Now I am out the cost of the price I paid before and they want me to pay a monthly or yearly fee... So my review went from 4 stars to 1 star, and I will no longer be using the service. Cheap, petty and completely disgusting that these people would force me to pay monthly when I put down money for Scholly before they charged money. Then finding out and tricking me into downloading a “patch” that forces me to pay for it monthly know.

I can no longer recommend this product. I work at a college financial aid office and I recommended this product to every student who came into my office for money. You’ve lost that free targeted marketing from me. I will from now on recommend students go elsewhere.

by Izzy._.edits

I was told to use Scholly/website from a person at my school (who clearly didn’t know you had to pay for it). My new email is now being cluttered by emails that say “someone’s name - this app” and then you can’t even use Scholly unless you pay monthly subscription like ok just take money from people that can’t afford much. I can’t even go on Scholly or website to delete my account to stop the emails. On the website if you login to try to go to settings it’ll just suggest that you get Scholly . Oh and I was doing a little research on their questions and answers section of their website (since apparently that’s the only other part of the website you can go to) and well they don’t give refunds and if you have automatic pay on for apple for a subscription they won’t tell you how to cancel that subscription. In the end I highly recommend you don’t get a subscription and you don’t sign up for Scholly. It’s a waste of time.

by Randar

Saw this guy on shark tank a while back and no one gave him a deal. Now I know why. But I liked the concept and it sounded promising so I bought in for a very expensive one year membership to help my daughter in her first year of college. I'm a fair-minded person and I don't write a review unless I feel it's actually warranted to serve others. So, here you go. Based on our experience I would say that your chances of getting a scholarship through Scholly are worse than a roll of the dice in Vegas. Many of the scholarship requirements are so specific, or so extremely vague, that it's hard to find any that would fit your student- even in the most general sense. Although we did apply for the zombie apocalypse scholarship (not kidding) because we thought it was pretty funny. That was a few months ago and nothing but crickets. Don't waste your hard earned dollars to pay for someone else's retirement fund. You'll probably find whatever exisits out there through the Google search engine.

by Smithabigail89

After having the same login issues as many others, I was finally able to get in using the “restore purchase” option. Upon getting in, I filled out my profile and answered a ton of questions. I was then taken to a screen that said, “looks like something went wrong”. From there, I attempted to close Scholly and reopen it. Upon reopening it, I was asked to create my profile again. The profile creation process was not easy either, as the fields do not fill or function properly.
I’ll try again in a few hours, but I’m seriously disappointed in Scholly so far.
I’m a Financial Coach, and I was hoping to find a resource to make a debt free college degree more easily within reach for my clients. I do see the benefit in paying for a service to match students with scholarships, but again, Scholly isn’t worth the free trial I’m “paying” for.
Another suggestion for pricing would also be to look at only charging for matches instead of a subscription. This would be proving your value before collecting up to $7.99 monthly for terrible functionality.

by JMYD49913150

Okay, I decided to try this out (because looking for scholarships that I qualified for is like going through a rabbit hole). Interesting enough, you cannot make a free account. It’s MANDATORY to pick a payment plan. Oh! And that plan gives you a short “free trial.” I picked a month so I could really use all Scholly ’s advantages.

I’m here to tell you that I’m better off using the commonly known scholarship websites. I was hoping Scholly would help me find scholarships that are more local and/or don’t have that much competition. But majority of the scholarships that matched with my profile are just from other popular sites, mostly from Unigo.

When it comes to Scholly : I also don’t understand why I can’t scroll down on certain scholarships. If you click on the description and it’s too long, you won’t be able to scroll down and read the rest of it. Most importantly, you can’t scroll down and click on “apply.”

Another pet peeve about Scholly is that on my profile I stated that I’m attending a community college and yet Scholly keeps matching me to scholarships that are for high school students. 😒

Let’s say you tell this app you are from Florida. They will still send you scholarships where the requirement is to be a resident from Wisconsin or any other state you don’t live in.

by 27Corey

Scholly is hardly intuitive and thoughtfully functional is a major overstatement. I’ve had it for years and I think it’s functionality has gone backwards.
For any subscription fee, Scholly should at least have a sorting function. I shouldn’t have to weed out scholarships that I’ve already included data which makes them not applicable to me. For example, I’m going to grad school, I shouldn’t get any scholarships for future high school grads or for only undergrad students.
Scholly tells me it found over $500,000 in potential scholarships for me. But it’s showing me 30, with an average reward of $3,000 (that’s not being over dramatic and on the high side of the average).
Great concept, as it was when they pitched it on Shark Tank, but poor execution.

by Confused Lemons

I recently saw a video that said Scholly is a holy grail in financial aid. I also saw that it was showcased on shark tank. I then downloaded Scholly yesterday and applied for the 3-day free trial and I do not mind paying $30 for the 6th month service—if it means it will work. Upon making my account, there have been so many glitches. The information is not saving properly for my categories and I admit I had to go back and keep adding my information for over 5 times. If it’s going to keep doing that, is paying $30 for this service even worth it? When opening Scholly , it also has been very slow in everything. Then, I came back to read the reviews and I have been seeing a lot of negative reviews that were posted recently. I am debating whether to give Scholly a try and pay up. I really want to(and hope these technical difficulties will stop), but my experience has been a bit disappointing.

by Stargirl2

Great idea and easy to use App. We justified paying the monthly fee of $3 for this app, as it appears to weed out many of the sweepstakes/scam scholarships found on other sites like FastWeb. Also, there are some opportunities listed in this app that we did not find anywhere else. However, as we go through the this app list generated after completing a profile, we have come across a couple that are listed as available, but when we actually link into the application website for a given scholarship, the company is no longer offering it. Wondering how frequently this app is verifying/updating their list?
Con: No reply when an e-mail was sent in regards to a possible technical issue. Zero response.... disappointing.
this app developers.... are you there? E-mail sent over two weeks ago.

by Aful28

I have heard good things in the past and wanted to try out Scholly before purchasing subscriptions for my high school mentees. I’m glad I tried it first! It worked fairly okay on the web version with the slight interface issues, which I expected because it was designed for the phone. I then tried using it on my phone and it is terrible. It does a decent job of sorting scholarships for you but does not give adequate descriptions of the criterion. That is fine, I don’t mind clicking the links but I can’t! I can’t get past the description without Scholly closing the description and going back to the list in a different spot from where I was. I went from hopeful to hopeless!

by Momaylo

Im a senior, i used to rely on the scholarship portals my university set up for me, thinking these would have everything in one place but after checking out Scholly I realized there are so many scholarship opportunities out there that weren’t presented to me because they are just obscure enough to not be in their radar but Scholly has gathered them all in one place. I’m glad Scholly exists and wish I’d had it when I was a freshman. If you take the time to go through it, answer ALL the questions for your parameters and it will match you with EVERYTHING, a list conveniently populated for you, updated with new scholarships, a timeline to help you keep track of deadlines coming up. Scholly is sooo helpful.

by Ghostsem

Scholly is extremely effective. It’s easy to navigate, consistently up to date, and has a large selection of scholarships to apply to.
That being said, here’s how it could improve—
1. I would love to see a way to report inaccuracies or irrelevance of a scholarship. For example, if I am a high school sophomore looking for scholarships, I likely won’t be enrolled in a school yet, so I don’t want to see scholarships with that requirement yet. this app does a great job of this for the most part, but for the rare times the scholarship is irrelevant or misrepresented, it would be nice to have a report button.
2. What’s a this app Score? Maybe I missed the explanation, but I still don’t know what that is. Could you put a brief description under the scrolling “advice” place on the dashboard?

Overall— great app! I definitely recommend it to scholarship-hunters.
——————
Update: some scholarships explicitly require the student to be enrolled in a college/university. It would be great if people who have not been accepted yet could filter out those scholarships. Perhaps add a “accepted to college” part in the profile?

by Diddabeth

I am a 40-something mom going back to school after 20 years to finish my BA degree. We aren’t rich and I’ve maxed out my student loan qualification bc of too many credits. I was excited to try Scholly as I’m having a hard time finding scholarships for returning adult students and I was hoping Scholly could find scholarships in corners of the web that I couldn’t.

As it turns out, I will never know. The sign up process asks what year you are in high school. I am 25 years out of high school, and yet I couldn’t continue signing up until I chose a year. It gave me no other choices than those. I gave up after that as I don’t want to pay $45 to get matched with scholarships that are only for high school students.

What’s funny to me is that the sign up process also asks what kind of degree you’re seeking, including Master’s Degrees. I would be willing to bet that there are WAY more working adults going for Master’s degrees than there are kids just out of high school.

If you’re a returning adult student, find a better app and don’t waste you’re money on this one. So disappointing. 👎

by Sfhaaefvhmoomoo

Let’s get this clear - you are paying money for an app that helps students that do not have the means to pay for schooling? A lot of people applying for scholarships are in need/need based situations and just can’t spend money on an app when you can do it for free elsewhere. Read the Apple spotlight for Scholly and thought how backwards this was - the creator was from a low income family and spent hours applying & now he wants to help other kids... at a price. Just do what the creator did, go to the library and apply - FOR FREE. It’s like making the homeless people reaching out to the food kitchen to pay a monthly subscription fee.

I have no reason to complain - there are way better resources for free elsewhere - but I just thought this was ridiculous...

by Rob56283

I downloaded Scholly because of the unique story the founder had applying to scholarships on a library computer because he was not even able to afford a smartphone. I was very surprised to see that he then wanted to charge money to use his app, as the free version has very limited resources that are not very helpful. Very disappointed in how you sold out because kids like you aren’t able to afford to use this resource. Would you have been able to use this service that costs $30, Chris? Seems very hypocritical and like you’re part of the problem, not the solution. I’d urge anyone who actually needs financial aid to use free services online that don’t profit directly off the backs of students just looking for help.

by Annoyed98765

The concept of this is fantastic. But there are little things that make it not worth $2.99 a month. When you try to delete an option it asks you why and when you select it it says it will be removed but it doesn’t remove it. A few times it actually deleted the option below it instead. It also gave me several options for African American and Indian scholarships when I am neither and have neither on my profile. The point of this and why it is a paid for subscription is because it is supposed to weed out the majority of what you are not eligible for. But out of the options it gives me I am only eligible for about half

by Kat2x2

Im a senior, i used to rely on the scholarship portals my university set up for me, thinking these would have everything in one place but after checking out Scholly I realized there are so many scholarship opportunities out there that weren’t presented to me because they are just obscure enough to not be in their radar but Scholly has gathered them all in one place. I’m glad Scholly exists and wish I’d had it when I was a freshman. If you take the time to go through it, answer ALL the questions for your parameters and it will match you with EVERYTHING, a list conveniently populated for you, updated with new scholarships, a timeline to help you keep track of deadlines coming up. Scholly is sooo helpful.

by Tuhtz

I’ve had Scholly since I’ve started college in 2014. I’ve applied for scholarships every year and haven’t been rewarded, not at fault at Scholly, but still it makes me regret buying Scholly and putting in all that effort just to end up collecting more loans and debt. It’s a great idea, and I figured it was worth the initial pay because finding scholarships takes time which I have very little of; but with another monthly payment to add onto paying my normal bills and my school debt, even one as little as $3, adds up.

It’s a great resource and gives you the chance at so many opportunities! Use it only if you’re okay with paying 😊 it’ll be worth it for someone I’m sure.

by Senior2018

I give this app a 4 star rating! I am a high school senior due to graduate in may 2018 and this app is helping me so much with finding scholarships with out the hassle of having to surcharge for hours on other sights and validate the scholarship. I love the personal profile and the due date notices but I do with that you could add in comments of more info on your profile because I am a life guard and for the life of me there was nothing on there for that but other then that I am finding this very helpful in my preparation.

by Crazycatladykatie

Overall a helpful app for finding scholarships at a pretty cheap price. There are ways it could improve. I got a lot of scholarships that didn’t match me, were for majors I wasn’t interested in or places I didn’t live. But it was hard to weed these out, because each scholarship gets one generic description that often isn’t very helpful. If the descriptions could be edited to show more important details like the requirements for application or essay word count, that would be so helpful. Also it would be really nice if we could look up scholarships. For example, if I could see all scholarships for business majors, or search for no essay scholarships. Things like that. That would definitely make Scholly 5 stars. As it is, I find it worth it for one month, but not any longer.

by Krisroar

Scholly has made applying for scholarships easy and fun. I never thought I would get so much satisfaction from applying from scholarships, but every time I hit “applied” I just feel this wave of happiness overtake my body. Scholly is convenient because it weeds out all those random “post your opinion and win $10,000” scholarships. Scholly offers the real deal and it helps you by setting goals and personalizing a profile so your scholarships match with your aspirations. I have applied to about 8 scholarships already and I am so excited to see what the future brings because of this app!