Reusable Materials 28: Additional Questions From Our Readers

Thursdays we discuss how reusable materials help you WOW committees and save time

Andrew needed money to pay for graduate school at a very reputable private university. The school gave him a teaching assistantship with a stipend. He still needed additional money to cover the rest of his costs including housing, food, and transportation. He applied for additional financial aid and received $20,000 more money. for the two year period.

Q: Why are almost all sites selling information to 3rd parties?

A: Most scholarship sites offer their services free of charge to students and parents. In fact, the younger generation do not pay for information these days. They find it free on the Internet. They expect information to be free.

However, it costs money to gather, maintain, and provide a web site with search and profiling capabilities. In addition, the lure to monetize a web site draws to publishers. WordPress teaches sponsors how to monetize their site with ease. Further, big corporations sponsor most of the really good scholarship search engines. They intend to make a profit, so they sell information to 3rd parties to cover the costs—and more—of the site.

Fortunately, other methods of sponsoring simple sites is emerging. More colleges provide access to scholarship lists without requiring usernames or passwords. We’re particularly excited by the emergence of scholarship wikis like www.SchoolLibrary.com. Finally, some enterprising companies are going to charge an annual fee for counselors, parents, and students to access commercial free information with no gimmicks to gather your information.

Q: Why would some sites limit offerings to just 4-6 years?

A: The Great Recession reduced the amount of money available to students. At the same time, large corporations bought a few of the more respected scholarship search engines. Many decided to reduce their market niche to the more lucrative 16-20 year-old market. Credit card and other companies pay a lot of money to get the information about young college students. This, short-sighted approach, costs these sites hundreds of thousands in subscribers.

Saturdays we will share a tip about how you can use Internet search engines to find funding

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