Did I start too soon?

arabrab
Sun, 17 Jun 2012 22:41:58 +0000

A reality is that if you NEED scholarship or financial aid money you are much better off looking for colleges that can and do provide substantial aid for someone with your statistics and interests. You could spend 200 hours on Fastweb applying for dozens of small scholarships, and be quite likely to not end up with more than a thousand bucks – maybe less. And, if your eventual college gives you financial aid that includes grants, that thousand bucks may not even help you in the end the way that colleges adjust aid.

Figuring out the very best college list for you given whatever financial constraints you have, and then getting applications in very early is the best way to maximize your merit and financial aid offers. Truly.

It gets frustrating seeing good students spend an inordinate amount of time chasing small or highly unlikely scholarships when they could be spending that time researching schools, which is where most of the money is to be found. Fastweb is, by and large, a waste of time. A small, small handful of students end up with large scholarships – what Fastweb is really doing is selling access to you to lots and lots and lots of advertisers.

Take a good look at their privacy policy:
[Privacy Policy - Fastweb](Privacy Policy | Fastweb) particularly the part of section three that says, “If you give your permission to allow third parties to contact you, personal information about you (such as your contact information and other information collected during your visit to Fastweb) may be shared with colleges, universities, potential employers, recruiters/headhunters, data aggregators, marketers (possibly in the form of list rental), and other organizations.”

They’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. It is a subsidiary of Monster.com, and all those advertisers are just salivating at a chance to find another new prospect.