HOW TO SEARCH FOR SCHOLARSHIPS, NOT GET LOST IN SPAM By Ryan Lane Scholarship search websites promise students access to millions of awards totaling billions in free money for college. All you need is an email address to use sites like Fastweb, Cappex and Unigo. But once you provide it, scholarship listings aren’t the only things you’ll receive. “[You] are going to get a lot of spam,” says Monica Matthews, creator of the website how2winscholarships.com. “You are going to be inundated.”
Don’t let a barrage of emails deter you from signing up – or sticking with – a scholarship website, though.
You don’t have to repay scholarships, making them the best way to pay for college. You can win private awards before you even know where you’ll go to college. And giving a scholarship site some basic data can simplify your search by identifying potential matches.
Here’s how to use these tools to get more than just marketing emails.
Decide whether to opt out Scholarship sites let you opt out of email communications. But you may not want to unsubscribe from everything. Fastweb, which has helped students find scholarships since 1995, lets you pick specific communications when you register. That way, you’ll receive messages about award deadlines but not part-time jobs, for example. “Our aim is to keep students informed,” says Kathryn Knight Randolph, Fastweb’s associate content editor.
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