It is no secret that searching for scholarships is an immensely daunting task. There are thousands of websites, search engines, and forms to fill out, making it complicated and time consuming. Besides the scholarships Alabama awards upon admittance to the University, there are also scholarships admitted students can apply for, as well as scholarships through your fraternity or sorority. 

This January, there is a new tool for use: Compass. There are many signs posted around campus for this service, which has been in the works for over a year as a joint project with the SGA, Office of Academic Affairs, and Student Affairs. It was developed by the Management Information Systems IT Innovation Center on campus. 

“Compass uses students' personal, self-reported criteria to give them the most up-to-date and relevant external scholarship resources,” said Mackenzie Brown, Director of Media Relations for SGA. 

Once you go to compass.ua.edu, you fill out a questionnaire with information such as GPA, year in school and other pertinent information. When your profile is complete, the database matches you with scholarships that fit your criteria, with links to apply. You can save scholarships to return to, and more scholarships are being added to the database. There are currently about 1,000 scholarships available on the website that are tailored to a variety of criteria.             

I found the website incredibly easy to use, and the search criteria are extensive, which definitely helps to weed out matches as well as help match for scholarships based on my major. If you are on the hunt for scholarships, definitely check out Compass!