Caveat Emptor or Buyer Beware 14: Reduced Opportunities for Money

Saturdays we share a tip or cautions to facilitate getting scholarships or avoiding problems

Frank has been coaching people to find scholarships for seven years. He noticed that, in the last three years, the results from search engine profiles had reduced significantly. People who usually found 250-350 solid scholarship opportunities were finding only 38-50. In addition, he found an increased number contests, surveys, and other typical wastes of time. He contacted several of the search engines with unsatisfactory responses or results.

Fewer Good Results and More Scams

As outlined in the Frank’s story above, we see fewer positive actions occurring with scholarships lately. At first, we ascribed the reductions to the recession and less money in the economy. We’re now wondering if less money is entering the process for student financial aid.

We sense that that monetizing scholarship web sites to maintain free services led to less results for the students and more money for the web sites. More opportunities that appear as scholarships are actually

• Contests that offer very small rewards ($1,000 a week) to gather your name and email which the sell to other organizations
• Surveys which gather your personal information and sell it to companies sponsoring the surveys
• Short (3 sentence) scholarship applications which ask for your name, email address, and an answer to a short question like
  • “Rate how well your school  educates and prepares you for the college”
  • “Whose face would you add to the four on Mount Rushmore and why?”
  • “How are you more than a test score?”
• Offers more information about a variety of subjects which then authorize the web site to sell your information to “providers, vendors, or others” (fine print in the terms of agreement)

Less Effectiveness of Reusable Materials

We find that reliable scholarships still require a more detailed application process. Your master application will help you complete longer applications faster.

However, scholarships are also adapting to a younger generation more used to texting rather than writing. They expect shorter, easier applications. We will keep you informed.

Tuesdays we review A Better Chance as source of financial aid for minorities