<p>I agree with you in that the hierarchy of financial aid opportunities, those tiny scholarships that you have to compete for with everyone in the country should be at the bottom of your priority list. It’s not that you can’t win them, it’s just that they are basically a time-consuming lottery ticket. </p>
<p>Most people who get good scholarship aid to pay for college get scholarships directly from the schools themselves (ie schools that offer ‘merit aid’, aid that’s based on your SAT scores, your GPA, or some other measurement of academic excellence – a good example is a school that gives you a full ride or full tuition for being a National Merit Scholar). </p>
<p>The next step down from that would be the local scholarships that you talk about, which are more winnable simply because you don’t have to compete with everyone in their world. </p>
<p>Only if you have time left to kill after searching for merit aid opportunities and local scholarships would I spend any time on places like Fastweb or Cappex. I don’t want to bash on those sites too hard, but the whole “millions of scholarships go unclaimed” thing is an old urban legend/myth concocted by people who combined employer tuition assistance programs, departmental grants at specific colleges, and other obviously limited sources of funding together to make it sound as if there’s a huge pot of money for anyone to go to any college for free out there. The biggest mistake you can make is ignoring potential merit aid opportunities and relying too heavily on the (usually fruitless) hope of somehow being able to cobble together enough $1000 scholarships for being left-handed to pay for 4 years of college.</p>