By: Mevish Jaffer
The costs associated with attending college continues to rise every year, making students dependent on some kind of financial assistance to help cover expenses. Aside from various financial aid programs offered through the federal government in the form of student loans and grants, scholarships are another popular alternative to finance your college education. There are literally thousands of college scholarships available for every type of student. However, you have to apply caution while searching for them as to not become susceptible to scholarship scammers.
“Be Ware”!
Perhaps the feature that most attracts students to college scholarships is the fact that they don’t have to be repaid, unlike student loans. Scholarships are awarded to students for several different reasons, the most popular being merit-based or athleticism. Basically, college scholarships are a popular choice for financing college education and are in great demand among students, which also means however that scammers are likely to abuse the college scholarship market.
Unfortunately, any “Tom, Dick or Harry” can create and send out fraudulent letters or emails to potential college students stating that he/she has “automatically been awarded” a scholarship of some kind. Red flags should immediately come up when you see the words automatically awarded, as 9 times out of 10, you can never be automatically awarded with anything, much less a scholarship!
Specific Signs to Watch Out For
The Federal Trade Commission considers the following scenarios/claims to be “suspicious” and a definite sign of possible scholarship scams:
- Seeing or hearing the phrase, “The scholarship is guaranteed or your money back”
- Claims of certain scholarship information not being available anywhere else
- Claims stating that you have won a scholarship prize
- Solicitation of your credit card or bank account information
Believe it or not, there are many scholarship-finding services that actually guarantee you will win a scholarship or your money back. Odds are that if it is a scam, being able to get a refund will be extremely challenging as a result of various terms and conditions that will be attached. Prior to making any sort of financial commitment to these types of services, it would be in your best interest to thoroughly scrutinize the refund policies.
College scholarship information and/or offers are generally always available to the public through your school, financial aid office etc. Therefore, an organization claiming that the scholarship information they have can’t be attainted anywhere else is most likely a “fishy” sign and one that you should watch out for as a possible con.
Learning that you have won a prize of any kind, especially a scholarship should make you extra cautious. The “you won a scholarship prize” scam is fairly popular. It usually works by asking you to pay certain fees or taxes before your “prize” can be released to you. Another dead give-away that this scenario could be a scam is if you don’t even remember entering a contest for any sort of scholarship prize in the first place!
Something that you should be VERY weary of is if you ever get a phone call or letter claiming that you have won a scholarship, but need to provide your credit card and/or bank account information in order for them to hold your “winning” scholarship. The importance of never disclosing such information without having actual proof that it’s not a scam cannot be stressed enough!
If you remember nothing else about college scholarship scams, keep one thing in mind; if you ever have to pay money in order to get money, then odds are it’s a scam! It’s also important to be aware that there are legitimate college scholarships out there; however you have to tread carefully and do your research thoroughly.
