Despite the rising costs of college and student loan debt, only one in three families sought and received private or community scholarships to pay for college, according to Sallie Mae’s How America Pays for College report. To help more students apply for scholarships and improve their chances by applying to the right competitions, LifeLaunchr, a virtual, personalized college admissions coaching service, has launched a free scholarship matching tool.

LifeLaunchr Scholarship Match provides students and their parents with an individualized list of college scholarships based on numerous criteria, including location, academics, personal interests, and affiliations. Unlike other scholarship services, LifeLaunchr excludes sweepstakes, does not accept advertising, and vets all scholarship programs to ensure they are legitimate and come from reputable sources. The tool indicates a student’s match score, or how well the student fits the program criteria, for each scholarship. Students can also see the total amount of scholarship money available to them based on their eligibility. LifeLaunchr enables students to easily find and apply to scholarships that they have a better chance of earning.

Most families find it difficult to pay the average out-of-pocket costs of more than $20,000 per year for college. Scholarships can help ease the financial burden for families, reducing the amount of income, savings and loans students and their parents have to use to cover college costs. Even the smallest scholarship can help pay for expensive textbooks and living expenses, consequential costs to those on limited budgets.

Common misconceptions often keep students from applying for scholarships: they are only for top athletes and scholars; they are only for minority and low-income students; eligibility is reserved for high school seniors; and competition is too fierce. There are hundreds of thousands of scholarships available, from local to national, and targeted to a wide range of student backgrounds and abilities, but oftentimes, families don’t know where to look and which ones they may be able to win.

“The stress of paying for college is compounded by the time-consuming experience of managing myriad applications and deadlines,” said Venkates Swaminathan, founder and CEO of LifeLaunchr. “LifeLaunchr helps families spend their time wisely in applying for colleges as well as scholarships that are the right fit. We aim to ensure students not only get into college but also can afford it, because it’s critical to their future success. College is the most expensive investment many families will make other than their homes.”

Searching for scholarships and finding matches on LifeLaunchr Scholarship Match is free. By signing up for a LifeLaunchr subscription, students can “follow” the scholarships they are interested in pursuing to get reminders and text-message or email alerts for application timelines. College-bound students and their families no longer have to visit various websites to get the information they need or track down and manage numerous due dates.

Scholarship Match is also a useful tool for high school and private college admissions counselors in their work with students.

Students can start their scholarship search at lifelaunchr.com/your-scholarship-matches.