Why we built TryScholarships

We're parents of five. Our oldest daughter has finished school and is happily married. Our son is 19 and a senior in college. Our two younger daughters are in high school right now: one is a 17-year-old senior and the other a 16-year-old junior. And our youngest is 9. With tuition and living costs rising every year, every scholarship and grant matters to a family like ours.

When our son was applying, I'd ask him, “How's the scholarship search going?” He'd say, “Great, I've applied to a lot of them.”

“Show me,” I'd say.

And then the hunt would start: “Let me find the sites I applied to…” Different websites, different logins, deadlines in different places, and nothing organized under one roof. Neither of us could tell what was submitted, what was still due, or what had come back.

I'm a business owner and a technologist, and I kept thinking: there has to be a better way to organize this. With our two daughters about to go through the same process, I didn't want our family to live through that confusion again.

So we built the tool we wished we'd had: real, verified scholarships matched to each child, with every application, document and deadline in one place a parent can actually see. That's TryScholarships.

We built it for our kids. We hope it helps yours too.

— Raza & Imrana Begg