No, 99% are not scams. You simply haven’t been taught how to do the search without being placed on their email list or having your email sold or used by “partners.” (And for others, your teen either applied to the wrong scholarships or didn’t know how to win them.)
There are 1.8 million scholarships totaling 23 billion dollars given away each year.
There are a few that are “sweepstakes drawings”. They are not scams as they are actually giving away $1000 per month. But because they only require name and email (and maybe a one sentence “essay”) the only way they can give away that much $ is to sell the list of applicant emails. It’s in the small print. I don’t recommend these.
The largest scholarship in one bucket is from the college your teen chooses to attend.
Private scholarships are literally everywhere-grocery stores, libraries, banks, fast food restaurants, hardware stores, electric coops, athletic shoe stores, organizations of all kinds, etc.
Some are local, others will be state or national.
My teens attended college on multiple scholarships totaling more than $199,000. Daughter (3 national, 2 state, 2 from her college, 2 regional, 2 local). Son (4 national, 2 state, 1 from his college, 2 regional, 1 local).
Scholarships for high school seniors have deadlines that begin in May after junior year and end in August b4 starting college.
I have a YouTube video on how to use Fastweb for search the national database. Read the description below the video for additional details. (In my course and book I teach 17 ways of finding scholarships your teen has the best chance of winning.)
How to Navigate FastWeb YT link:
Register with FastWeb or other databases using a NEW email for registration. Get a NEW Gmail email address for registering with scholarship databases. You will only use it to login, not for actually applying to the scholarships. Do NOT use your personal or professional email. Be sure to also read the info in the description under the Youtube video! Happy Hunting!
https://youtu.be/9by_SKcPcqM
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