The Truth About Scholarship Scams
Students on the look out for financial aid to fund their college education naturally prefer scholarships to loans. Being awarded a scholarship means that you don’t have to worry about repaying the money and all the issues that go hand in hand with it. You can focus on your academic responsibilities rather than be bogged down by financial burdens. There are several scholarships in all sorts of shapes and sizes that are available to students these days. Unfortunately though, there are a lot of scams floating around in the form of scholarships. You should know how to steer clear of them.
Scrutinize any ‘automatic offers’
Students can often get carried away while looking for scholarships because they are so keen to find one. They get excited about anything that looks remotely close to a scholarship opportunity and are thus susceptible to being duped into entertaining fraudulent scholarship offers. You should always scrutinize all the mails you receive informing you of some sort of ‘automatic’ scholarship that you have been chosen for. Ninety percent of these are scams and you must be vigilant enough to spot them and get rid of them. Most scholarships are merit based. There is no such thing as an automatic scholarship.
Fraud indicators
There are certain points, mentioned below, that the federal trade commission has identified as being good indicators of scholarship fraud.
• Use of the line, ‘Your scholarship guaranteed, or your money back’
• You being informed that you have won some sort of prize in the form of a scholarship.
• Being asked for your bank account or credit card information.
• The claim that information about that particular scholarship is not available elsewhere.
Many scholarship-finding services actually make you ‘money back’ promises in case you don’t get a scholarship. The chances of you getting your money back in the case of a fraud though, are little to none owning to the complex terms and conditions. It is absolutely essential that you scrutinize these offers very carefully before committing to any of them. Information regarding all scholarships should be available at the financial aid department at your university so don’t believe any service provider who claims sole possession of information regarding a scholarship.
Any phone call or letter you receive asking you to give out your credit card number or bank account information is surely fraudulent. These offers must not even be looked at. Be cautious of such offers since they can prove extremely costly to you if you do happen to share the wanted information.
Remember, if you ever have to pay up first in order to get a scholarship, there’s fraud written all over it. There are definitely a lot of genuine scholarships that you could be eligible for, but please take the effort to scrutinize them thoroughly.
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