How scholarship matching actually works
Four things we check
Your profile is compared against each scholarship on four dimensions: graduation year (if the scholarship has a minimum or maximum), state (if it's restricted to certain states), intended major (if it's restricted to certain fields), and whether it requires demonstrated financial need. A scholarship is only excluded from your matches when one of these is a genuine conflict.
Missing information never hides a scholarship
If you haven't filled in your state, we don't exclude you from state-restricted scholarships — we just can't judge that dimension, so it doesn't count against you. The same is true for every other field. The only way a scholarship disappears from your matches is an actual, known conflict, like a graduation-year cutoff that clearly excludes you. Seeing one extra scholarship you don't actually qualify for costs you a few seconds; never seeing a real match costs you the scholarship.
Why financial need is treated more conservatively
Real eligibility for a need-based scholarship depends on much more than one income number — family size, assets, and cost of attendance all factor in. Our income range field only excludes you from a need-based scholarship at the highest bracket, where a conflict is unambiguous. Anywhere below that, we still show it to you, since the sponsor's own application is the real judge of need, not a rough range on our end.
Your profile can change anytime
If your major, state, or grad year changes, update your profile and your matches update immediately — nothing about your original answers is locked in.