Table of Contents
*This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
A new college year has started and with it comes the price tags of coursework and textbooks. Scholarships and grants can help alleviate some of the debt, if not pay it off altogether. Course Hero is one such website that offers scholarships along with their tutoring services.
Are they legit though or just a scam to give a wide berth? Here’s our Course Hero scholarship review to answer your questions.
What Is Course Hero Scholarship?
Course Hero Scholarships are offered by Course Hero, Inc. Course Hero is a tutoring website designed to help college students who are having troubles with their coursework. They hope to build an expansive digital library of course-specific material to help students and educators succeed in their work.
To start off our Course Hero scholarship review, we found they offer two scholarships: Get There Scholarship and Academic Hero Scholarship. The Get There Scholarship is one of Course Hero’s monthly scholarships that offer scholarship money up to $5,000. You have to create an account with them to be eligible to apply and one winner is chosen every month.
The Academic Hero 2018 Scholarship offers $10,000 scholarship for the lucky winner. To eligible for this, you have to create a free account with Course Hero and submit a 500-word essay on the required topic. You have to be 16 years old and older to apply and either currently attending or plans to attend an accredited college. They have a list of the accredited colleges and universities on their page.
Both scholarships seem to be legit. They were advertised on several scholarship pages, including USAScholarships.com. They look to be pretty transparent in their rules and guidelines for the contests.
We Liked Course Hero Scholarship Because…
For this part of the Course Hero scholarship review, we like them because they offer multiple scholarships throughout the year. For one, their Academic Hero Scholarship is a $10,000 scholarship. That is a good chunk of change, especially when four-year degrees total out to over $30,000. That’s at least a third of the tuition already paid off.
Their monthly scholarships are a good find as well. Just creating an account with Course Hero and a few short-answer questions makes you eligible to win a $1,000 scholarship. However, you can increase your chances to get $5,000 by doing a few other things such as sharing the link over social media.
Related: Niche Scholarship Review
All of their scholarships are easy to apply for – they only take about ten minutes or so. As mentioned before, they are safe and legit scholarships. While the chances of winning scholarship contests aren’t always good, Course Hero offers new scholarships monthly. Even if you don’t get a scholarship this month, you will have new chances in the future to help with tuition.
In summary, here’s what we liked in our Course Hero scholarship review:
- All scholarships are easy to apply for.
- Their big scholarship is $10,000 – a good chunk of tuition.
- Offer new, smaller scholarships monthly.
- These are legit scholarships.
Course Hero Scholarship Cons
Now into the nitty, gritty of our Course Hero scholarship review. While we really liked the scholarships offered by the company, we did come across some troubling information on the company itself.
As explained above, Course Hero is a company that strives to provide an expansive digital database of course-specific materials to tutor students and educators. On the surface, it looks great. The site provides study guides, materials, and tutors for specific courses from different colleges and universities. The basic account you get when you sign up allows you to also upload materials and documents to help other students having troubles in that class.
The other accounts offered while providing more services are on a subscription basis.
In finding information outside of the company’s site though, we found that previous users had not gotten the services they’d paid for. An article on Reviewopedia for example stated that students who paid for a premium subscription and tried to use to the tutor help desk, would either not get the help they needed to understand.
Professors were not happy to find their course material on the website as they didn’t give permission and felt the company was making money off of their work. Other sites and forums gave similar negative reviews, some of which are going to be explained further.
In summary:
- Course Hero looks like great homework tutoring on the surface.
- Paid subscription for full services.
- Multiple complaints on not getting services paid for.
- Educators disheartened to find their work exploited.
Course Hero Scholarship Online Reviews Say:
So is Course Hero Scholarship legit? Yes, the scholarships do seem to be legit. They are like any small scholarship contest where you can quickly apply and answer a short essay question. Whether it’s a $5,000 monthly scholarship or the $10,000 Academia Hero, they will pay off a decent chunk of tuition if you win it.
What we did find questionable with our Course Hero scholarship review is the company itself. In looking through blogs and forums on the company’s policies and customer service, we were disheartened to find that Course Hero seemed to get very low ratings across the board.
While some students stated that Course Hero was a good way to help boost their GPA, a lot more were warning others about the lack of tutoring help and the email spam they received because of their account. Others also warned to delete their credit card information from the site because of unauthorized charges they would find on their bills. Even on Better Business Bureau, they are rated at 1.5 stars and have 93 customer complaints.
To Wrap It Up
In our Course Hero scholarship review, we found a couple different things. First, we liked the scholarships Course Hero offered. They look to be legit scholarships that easy to apply for. Upon research of Course Hero, however, we found that the company itself sent up a lot of red flags. Overall, we think it’s a better idea to set your sights on more legit and ethical companies that offer the same amount of scholarship money that Course Hero does.
What are your thoughts? Do you have any experiences with Course Hero and their scholarships or have more questions? Leave your own Course Hero scholarship review in the comments below.
