How to Use the Opportunities Catalogue

Most scholarship lists are graveyards: expired deadlines, programmes that stopped running years ago, links that go nowhere. The catalogue at /opportunities is built to be the opposite — a shorter list you can actually act on. This guide shows you how to get the most out of it in about ten minutes.

In short

• Every listing is verified against its official page and shows a real deadline.
• Filters and the search box narrow by type, level, funding and field — or describe what you want in plain words.
• Fill in your eligibility profile once and every listing tells you honestly whether you qualify.
• Saving and tracking are free, and always will be.

Start with the honest question: what are you actually looking for?

The catalogue covers more than scholarships: fellowships, internships, funded master's and PhD places, grants and competitions. The filter bar lets you narrow by category, study level, funding type and field. If clicking filters feels wrong, type what you want into the search box the way you would say it to a person — "fully funded master's in public health in Europe" — and the catalogue will show you what it understood, so you can correct it if it guessed wrong.

Read a listing like an applicant, not a browser

Each listing shows the same skeleton: what it is, who runs it, what the funding covers, the real deadline with days remaining, and a link to the official page. Two habits will save you months:

Check the "verified" line. It tells you when we last checked the listing against the official source. The deadline you see is the deadline that was published there.

Always click through to the official page before you commit serious work. We verify listings, but the official page is the authority, and programmes occasionally change rules mid-cycle. The link is on every listing precisely so you never apply based on a summary — ours or anyone's.

Set up your eligibility profile once

The single most useful ten minutes you can spend: fill in your eligibility profile — nationality, education level, field, graduation year, and where you would like to study or work. From then on, every listing shows a verdict for you specifically: eligible, not eligible, or check yourself where a published rule cannot be decided automatically.

The check is honest by design. Preferences shape what ranks first; they never hide something you qualify for. And where a rule is ambiguous — some awards restrict by criteria we cannot verify for you — the catalogue says "check yourself" rather than guessing.

Your profile is used only for eligibility checks, ranking and the alerts you opt into. It is not shown to mentors, institutions or other students, and deleting it removes it.

Save now, decide later

Found something promising but the deadline is months away? Save it. Your saved list lives in your dashboard, and if you opt into alerts you will get a weekly digest — new matches and approaching deadlines, every Monday morning, not a daily drip.

When you are ready to apply, track it

Open the listing and press "Track this application". That creates an application record you control — status, notes, and the pieces you need to gather. It is the difference between "I think I was going to apply for that" and a plan. How tracking works in detail is its own guide: from found to submitted.

Ask someone who has won it

Every listing has "Ask a mentor about this". It requests a mentor with relevant experience — where possible, someone who has been through that exact programme. A mentor can tell you what the committee actually cared about, what surprised them, and what they would do differently. No mentor can guarantee you an award, and anyone who promises one is breaking the platform's rules — report them.

What this costs

Nothing. Finding, checking, saving, tracking and reaching mentors are free and stay free. If a deadline is close and you want a dated plan worked back from it, feedback on your own drafts, and daily alerts, that is what Plus adds — but nothing about finding and applying is behind a price.