Despite its sketchy-sounding name, which suggests a site that’s itching to dump masses of spyware on you, Fastweb is actually a legitimate, spyware-free and very useful site. It is by far the most popular scholarship website.. What you do is sign up for the site (free), and fill out a personal profile, which is a bit of a pain. FastWeb then does the work in matching you up with potential scholarships you might consider applying for. They present quick summaries of what the scholarship is for, requirements, and a link to the homepage so you can get more specific information on how to apply. The quick stats on FastWeb:

• 1 out of every 3 college-bound seniors in 2006 used FastWeb
• over 16,000 high schools and 3,600 colleges recommend FastWeb
• there are 1.3 million scholarships worth over $3 billion that FastWeb provides information on

So the real question we all have is: what are your chances of getting a scholarship by using FastWeb? In all honesty, I think it’s slim, to quite slim. Hundreds, if not thousands, of students are applying for each scholarship, so it’s no cakewalk. However, from my experience, it seems like a lot of students will apply for scholarship during their senior year of high school, but a lot fewer apply during their college years. There are actually scholarships offered only to students already in college, and because of the fewer applicants, your chance at one of these is probably better.

Beyond FastWeb

An alternative to FastWeb is other similar scholarship services. It’s probably more worthwhile to look into these, since they’re less known and so competition for the scholarships is lighter. Free College Scholarships is one that is a lot easier to sign up for than FastWeb - it takes probably 1/5 of your time.

Another quality, lesser known scholarship site is Scholarship Experts. Scholarship Experts actually has a bigger collection of scholarship info than FastWeb - 2.4 million awards totaling over $14 billion. And, since it’s lesser known, some of the scholarships will be less competitive to get, so we highly recommend it.

Sign up for those or for FastWeb by following the links - it may take 5 or 10 mins but is free and probably worth it to maximize your chances.