Newsweek Article on Fastweb

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We received an email from Fastweb, mentioning a less than flattering article written by a columnist at Newsweek. Give Fastweb credit, they gave a link to the column and let parents make up their own mind.

Essentially, the article is pretty negative saying the site collects personal information (in order to sort/screen applicants) and some of the scholarships are so obscure or commercial, they're not relevant to most kids.

My son hasn't applied to any directly from Fastweb, but nothing in the article was a surprise to me, and honestly, some of the scholarships he was already aware of were mentioned on Fastweb, so I didn't think there was anything terribly wrong with what Fastweb is doing.

Does anyone have an opinion either way on Fastweb?

The article can be found at www.newsweek.com/id/135371

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Fastweb has worked fine for our family's needs, two of my children found scholarships (small $ amounts) that they would not have known about without Fastweb. I think that it can be especially helpful for some kids to use Fastweb because they would not have known about certain scholarships otherwise. When I was heading to college in 1981, I had to research and research to find out about available scholarships -- I would have loved to have had something like Fastweb back then :)

I read that same article earlier this evening...I have mixed feelings about Fastweb...My son applied for only one scholarship that Fastweb alerted us to, and the winners are supposed to be announced this coming week. It was through a professional organization that we would likely never have heard about on our own, although it's only $1,200 so it's not going to make or break his ability to attend college whether he wins or looses. One of his classmates said she got a scholarship for tall people through Fastweb, and being a girl over 6 ft. tall she qualified...I'm not sure if she automatically "won" it, or if she also had to write an essay. (She plans to major in journalism, so writing comes easily for her.)

The vast majority of Fastweb's scholarships do seem to require essays, and since my son is dyslexic, he's not likely to apply anyway, knowing the odds are stacked against his writing abilities...until I read the article, though, I didn't realize how many millions of registered Fastweb users there were!

Early on in my son's college search process, we did look at a couple of other Fastweb-recommended scholarships, and I remember one in particular that I tried the link to get more information about it, and it was expired. Another one was apparently only for people who lived in a certain area, which we don't, so I don't know why we got a notification in the first place.

I guess if you're a person who doesn't realize how many different kinds of possibilities their are for college funding, Fastweb can be a real "eye-opener," but I wouldn't recommend that anyone put "all their eggs" into Fastweb's basket...as the Newsweek article said, the best sources of funding are through the colleges directly. That's definitely where my son's major scholarship offers came from, not Fastweb.

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