The discovery problem still has free options. The strategy problem never had any. That’s the gap a real replacement has to close.
One-time payment. 30-day value guarantee. Built around your student and your target schools.
Going Merry stopped accepting new applications on March 5, 2026 and shut down at the end of March. Earnest, which acquired Going Merry in 2021, hasn’t publicly disclosed why. What matters more for your family is what the platform actually did and what it never did.
What Going Merry did: take the friction out of applying to many scholarships at once. Build a profile, get matched, submit through one form, save hours. That was useful and now it’s gone. What Going Merry never did: tell you whether those scholarships were worth applying to. Tell you that an outside scholarship can reduce the institutional aid your student already has. Read your specific target schools’ policy pages and figure out whether each award stacks or displaces. That work was never on the platform. It still isn’t on Bold.org, Fastweb, ScholarshipOwl, or any of the other free aggregators families end up on next. The real question isn’t which free database to switch to. The real question is whether you actually want a database, or whether you want answers.
Bold.org, Fastweb, Scholarships.com, ScholarshipOwl, Niche, your high school counseling portal. They still operate and they still cost nothing. They will give you the same lists Going Merry gave you, generate the same generic matches, and stay silent on the same question Going Merry never answered: whether the award will reduce your student's institutional aid at the specific colleges they applied to. If discovery is what you needed, this path works.
Fast. Free. Confidently wrong. It will hallucinate deadlines, cite scholarships that ended two cycles ago, and have no idea that the merit grant at one of your student's top schools displaces outside scholarships dollar-for-dollar past $2,500. We built MeritPlaybook because we tried that route first.
MeritPlaybook is the done-for-you replacement for the part Going Merry never solved. One intake form, $99, under five minutes. You get ranked scholarships specific to your student and target schools, school-by-school stacking flags, deadlines in order, and every trap award marked before it can quietly reduce the aid your student already has. Source-backed against current school financial aid pages, scholarship rules, and published aid policies before delivery.
Get your student's plan · $99 →A $3,000 outside scholarship is a great win at one of your student’s schools and a $3,000 reduction in institutional aid at another. Same scholarship. Same student. Different schools. Six-figure difference over four years from a stack of awards handled the wrong way. That’s the analysis no free database has ever caught. It’s not their job. It’s our entire product. For school-specific policy detail, see our TCU and SMU merit aid pages, or the outside scholarship displacement guide.
| Job to be done | Going Merry (shut down March 2026) | MeritPlaybook |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Shut down end of March 2026 | Operating |
| Pricing | Free | $99, one-time |
| Scholarship discovery | Profile matching, ~5M listings claimed | Ranked candidates from 5 research systems, deduped and reconciled |
| School-by-school stacking analysis | Not included | Yes, every school on your list |
| Displacement / trap-award flags | Not included | Yes, flagged before you apply |
| Deadline calendar in priority order | Per-award basis | One ordered list, ranked by likelihood and value |
| Source verification | Not disclosed | Every URL fetched and verified before delivery |
| Application submission | Single-app routing through partners | Not included. You apply through providers. |
| Turnaround | Instant matching | Under 5 minutes from intake to delivery |
Every recommendation is checked against current school financial aid pages, scholarship rules, and published aid policies. When a rule is unclear, we label it instead of pretending it is certain.
Findings ship with verify-first labels when the policy is unclear, missing, old, or situation-dependent. The playbook gives you the exact question to ask the financial aid office. This is the failure mode that breaks generic AI attempts.
One-time payment, no subscription, no upsell into coaching. If the playbook doesn’t hold up against your student’s actual aid letters, we revise it. Still not satisfied? Request a full refund within 30 days. Built by Paul Takisaki.
Going Merry stopped accepting new applications on March 5, 2026 and shut down at the end of March. Earnest, which acquired Going Merry in 2021, has not publicly disclosed why or announced a successor product. If you had applications in flight, Earnest's notice directs you to contact each scholarship administrator directly.
No. MeritPlaybook is $99, one time. We are not an aggregator and we don't host scholarship applications. What you pay for is research: multiple research passes check every scholarship candidate against current school financial aid pages, scholarship rules, deadlines, and stacking limits. When a rule is unclear, we label it instead of pretending it is certain.
There is no direct profile import. Going Merry's data was structured around their single-application matching model. MeritPlaybook is a strategy product, not an application portal, so it asks different questions: full target school list, intended major, family financial context, and the merit-aid signals that affect stacking decisions. The intake takes about five minutes.
They still operate and they solve the same problem Going Merry solved: discovery. If your goal is to find scholarships your student qualifies for and apply to many of them, they remain a reasonable starting point and they cost nothing. None of them tell you which of those awards will actually help at the specific colleges on your student's list. That's the analysis MeritPlaybook delivers.
That page is the historical comparison for families who knew both products. This page is the replacement workflow for families whose tool just disappeared.
MeritPlaybook does not host scholarship applications and does not write or edit essays. It tells you which awards to pursue, in what order, with deadlines and stacking flags. You apply through each scholarship provider directly. If application volume is your bottleneck, free aggregators still cover that piece.
Get one plain-English playbook for your student, your schools, and your final bill.
Founder pricing while it lasts · 30-day value guarantee · One-time payment
