In today’s day and age, our day-to-day lives tend to revolve around our phones—so why not make searching for colleges easier by using the accessible apps available right at your fingertips? People often state the mantra, “work smarter, not harder,” and that should apply here. The college search process doesn’t have to constantly be grueling and stressful—you should be enjoying it as a part of your overall college journey. After all, you can’t have four great years of college if you don’t put in the effort to search for and apply to colleges. These free apps (available on the App Store and Google Play) will not only help you search for colleges but also offer major, career, financial aid, and scholarship information and opportunities in just a few taps. Good luck and happy searching!
1. Niche
Niche is one of the top college search sites out there. In addition to offering resources for searching for colleges and scholarships, parents can find great K-12 schools for their kids, young people looking to move to a new city can find places to live, and new graduates can use it as a job search resource. With all those options, of course Niche has a college search app!
App features
- Discover schools that are right for you with in-depth college profiles that include costs, admission requirements, and student life information, as well as college reviews from current students and alumni.
- Compare school ratings and explore college rankings by state, major, and college type (e.g., public, private, religious affiliation).
- View your chances of getting into a school with the “admissions calculator” based on GPA, test scores, and major.
- Find personalized scholarships!
Related: How to Know Your College List Is Final
2. The College Fair
The College Fair app is just like attending a digital college fair—it even accounts for careers and life paths you may want to take after you graduate. If you’re a big picture kind of person who’s heavily factoring your future career into your college search, check out this app.
App features
- Explore and see how careers, majors, and schools connect by matching your strengths and interests with career options to guide your personalized college search and possible majors.
- Construct a list of possible schools and learn about offered majors, admission chances, costs, financial aid, test scores, and other factors.
- Create a personal profile and let schools know you’re interested by saving them to your list for further research.
- Use a handy tool to save and compare schools.
- The digital chatbot, Kai, can help you with anything related to your college search and answer questions about applications and financial aid.
3. College Advisor (The Princeton Review)
The Princeton Review is known for their lists and rankings of colleges that a lot of people put faith in because they’re a reputable source. But they do more than just tell you how college measure up against each other, they also provide you the resources to learn about those schools with The Princeton Review college search app.
App features
- Find your perfect college fit by filling out personal information and answering a series of questions about academics, geographic preferences, tuition needs, and more to get matched with schools, plus receive a list of safety, match, and dream schools just for you.
- Detailed information about each college is available.
- Most importantly, you can read unfiltered campus reviews from current students.
Related: The Experts’ Choice: Best College Planning Websites
4. College Search Guide
This app, which can be found as College Search Guide in the Apple Store and Google Play Store, is the only one that’s an independent app you can’t access as a website or that doesn’t have a website affiliate. So if you’re really looking to go entirely mobile, without having to worry about having an account on a website, this may be the app for you!
App features
- This app can be used by anyone across the world looking to enroll in a college or university in the United States.
- All the information is authentic; it comes directly from the US Department of Education.
- View details about schools in different categories such as best undergraduate colleges for different majors, best graduate schools, trade schools, community colleges, and more.
- The details are specific, ranging from degrees offered and diversity of the student population to retention rates and federal loan default rates.
- Save your favorite colleges and use a handy tool to compare various schools.
5. Scholarships.com
The name Scholarships.com may be a little deceiving because you’d think they only provide scholarship searches—but that’s far from the truth. While this website and app does primarily focus on providing a wide range of scholarship opportunities for students, you can also search for colleges. The combination of the two allows you to conduct your search in a way that applies your college wants and needs and your financial needs all in one.
App features
- The college search can be filtered by state, type, and major.
- Search colleges individually to find detailed information about academic levels; tuition and other expenses (on and off campus); school size; degrees offered; athletics; admission by test scores, gender, and race; graduation rates; and degrees conferred.
- Search for scholarships with their Scholarship Directory, which lists every scholarship you can imagine. You can filter them by categories ranging from gender and financial need to artistic ability and religion.
- Personalized scholarship results are also available by answering a series of questions oriented toward the applicant.
Related: The Ultimate List of Easy Scholarships
There are a host of different resources out there on the internet to help you with your college search. What’s important is figuring out which resources work best for you in terms of finding what you’re looking for and ease of access to that information. Check out the five apps above and see which one you like best and then get searching. Good luck!
And don’t forget that you can also find your favorite colleges and scholarships on CollegeXpress!
