How We Verify Scholarships

The seven rules

1. Nothing is invented. No scholarship, amount, deadline, sponsor, or eligibility rule is ever written from memory or inference. If a sponsor does not publish a figure, the field stays blank and the page says the sponsor does not publish it.
2. Every listing traces to an official source. Each record carries the sponsor's own URL. Aggregators may point us toward an award, but the facts come from the sponsor.
3. Every listing carries a verification date. It is shown on the listing, emitted as dateModified in structured data, and used as the sitemap timestamp.
4. A passed deadline is never shown as active. When a cycle closes, the listing switches to its recurring pattern and records what the sponsor has said about the next round. Nothing with a date in the past can appear as an open award.
5. Unverifiable listings are withheld, not published with a caveat. They stay in our records with a reason attached, but they do not appear on the site.
6. Race requirements are stated plainly. Every listing is labelled Black-students-only, minority-focused, or open to all, based on the sponsor's current published criteria rather than its history or reputation.
7. Money never buys editorial treatment. Sponsored listings are labelled and their outbound links carry rel="sponsored nofollow". They are verified to exactly the same standard, and payment cannot alter a fact.

What happened in August 2026

This policy exists because the site needed it. The original catalog held 110 listings, all created within a single twelve-minute window in February 2026 and never checked afterwards. In August 2026 we tested every link:

• 40 of 110 still led somewhere, though several landed on a sponsor's homepage or an error page rather than a scholarship
• 39 returned a hard 404
• 17 failed to connect at all
• 11 could not be checked automatically and needed reviewing by hand
• 8 pointed at web addresses that did not exist, and in several of those cases we could not confirm the organisation was real either

A pattern gave it away: 41 of the listings used a web address of the same invented shape, a plausible-looking organisation name followed by /scholarships. That is what guessing looks like, not research.

So the catalog was emptied and rebuilt one verified listing at a time. The old records were kept, marked unverified with a reason attached, rather than quietly deleted, so the correction is auditable. That is why this directory is currently smaller than it was in February. It is also why you can trust what is left.

How a listing gets published

1. An award reaches us through a sponsor's outreach, a student submission, or our own research.
2. We open the sponsor's own page and read the current criteria in full.
3. We record only what the page states: the amount, the deadline, who can apply, any GPA requirement, and where it applies.
4. We take the race requirement from the published criteria, not from the organisation's mission statement.
5. We write a short note saying which page we read and when, and publish it on the listing.
6. An automated check stops a listing going live if a required detail is missing, the link is insecure, or the deadline has already passed.
7. Links are re-tested on a rolling basis. A broken link sends the listing back for review.

Every change to a listing is recorded with who made it and when, so a correction can always be traced rather than quietly overwriting what came before.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Email [email protected] with the listing and what is inaccurate. Sponsors who want a listing corrected or removed get the same treatment, at no charge and with no conditions attached.

When we correct a material error, the listing's verification date is reset and the change is recorded in the file's history.

Questions about how we work