Source of Money 28: CollegeXpress or Careers & Colleges Search Engine

Tuesdays we review a source of financial aid to help you pay for college

Ginny applied for, and was admitted to, a for-profit and proprietary college. She signed a contract that specified she would pay per hour, and did not outline the full amount to be paid. When carefully totaled, she would have to pay $48,000 for an associates degree. The college offered to help Ginny get financial aid. She discovered that very few committees offered scholarships to attend her for-profit, proprietary college. Instead, their financial aid office helped her get a few federal grants and a lot of student loans.

Characteristics of CollegeXpress

CollegeXpress used to be called Colleges & Careers. The About Us section of the web site states

“CareersAndColleges.com is the companion website for Careers & Colleges magazine and is part of the CollegeXpress network of sites. The magazine, published by Carnegie Communications, is distributed and read by millions of students every year. Each magazine is full of need-to-know admission advice and tons of great college choices, and all those articles and school profiles can be found on CollegeXpress too!”

The home page lists that members can “find scholarships in our database worth $7 billion, ..read lots of helpful articles, expert advice and blogs, join and you’ll automatically be entered to win our $10,000 scholarship.”

• You can create your free profile
• The articles were pretty good
• They share a blog & “Ask the experts” sections

Disadvantages of CollegeXpress

• You cannot see anything without creating a profile
• The site displays the following disclaimer when you begin to create your profile: 
  • “We are able to provide this free service due to the willingness of our users to be contacted by colleges and our other marketing partners. We will keep you informed of the latest scholarship opportunities; plus, you could receive FREE information about colleges and promotions from top companies. If you choose not to receive information at this time, you can opt-out. ”
• The profile only asks for contact information, so they probably sell it per the above disclaimer

Thursday we answer questions from clients about your reusable FAFSA

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