Your students should never have to pay to get Scholarship information or to apply for Scholarships

One of my pet peeves are these companies that entice students on the web with Scholarship dollars and at the end of the registration process they spring on the students that there is a fee to apply. Your students should never have to pay to apply for scholarships (which are offered free). Companies like Fastweb don’t charge students to apply for available scholarships. Others that show up at the top of any Google search on Scholarships do.

I performed a test today and registered as a high school senior looking for scholarships with the company that showed up at the top of the Google search for Scholarships. The site claimed to have hundreds of thousands available in scholarship dollars. There was no mention of a cost, just a quick registration process. At the end of the registration process they then told me 250 scholarships were available for my profile to the tune of $300,000+. Pretty enticing huh? When I clicked to apply now I was then given the news that I could get a 7 day free trial and then there would be a $10 to $99 monthly charge (depending on the package chosen and time period I was willing to commit to) for the website to apply me to these various scholarships.

We recently surveyed our readers (Counselors throughout the country) and the #1 thing you said you would like to see more information on in the magazine is Scholarships that are available to your students. We are now going to run an article in each issue with information on available scholarships that your students can apply to for free.

Please tell your students and their parents they don’t need to pay to get scholarship information. There are many websites out there that offer this information to students free of charge.  Look for a listing of scholarships available in our Spring issue which will be out in February 2018.