subject: Winning Scholarships and Grants: Look out for Scammers! [print this page] Winning Scholarships and Grants: Look out for Scammers!
Hello my name is Lacey and I am a full time college student. Over the past year or so, I have gone from working two jobs, going to school full time, having no life and barley scraping by. To now only working about 10 hours a week and having all of my school expenses and most of my living expenses paid thanks to scholarships and grants. No I am not a straight A student and no I am not the next "basketball phoneme", instead I'm just another average student but I have found how to use scholarships and grants to make my college experience a little less stressful and not nearly as expensive. But enough with me, and I would like to answer a question that I am regularly asked by other people about winning scholarships and grants.
Scammers or sites trying to make a quick buck,
So there is a lot of sites that have been popping up lately about, that are saying they will find scholarships specifically for you that you qualify for if you pay them a fee for there services. I would avoid these guys like crazy. Most likely what you are going to get is a giant list of scholarships, and if your really lucky it might be specific to your state but I highly doubt there is any qualification of your eligibility.
Even if they are relevant scholarships, like say you are going into nursing like me and they give you a list of all the nursing scholarships in your state and surrounding area. That is great but the thing is, you can easily find all that information either at your financial aid office or searching online. There is so many resources available on the internet and a lot of these sites are charging $30, $40 even $50!!! How I see it this is free money to go to college so you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Another site I have been seeing out there a lot is the, "Time is running out on your chance to win this $10,000 scholarship, enter all your information to the right." And what the heading of their site should say is, "Enter all your information so I can sell it to whoever I can!!!" Even if these sites are legitimate which I highly doubt they are, your chances of winning that scholarship are close to nothing especially when you think of the amount of people who are applying for it.
So just like anything there are many trustworthy sites out there that are completely free, so don't waste your money trying to take a little short cut when all the information you need about certain scholarships can be found with a little elbow grease!
So I hope this helps you on your way to winning some scholarships and grants!
