<p>Hi, everyone!</p>
<p>I've been looking for scholarships on Fastweb, and amongst the Gilman and the Rotary and other recognized scholarships, there are also a lot of "weird" ones, with a lot of ads on their sites, for about $500 each. Some have photos of the "winners" and some do not.</p>
<p>Are these for real? Has anyone here ever won, or heard of anyone winning?</p>
<p>I had applied for one of the Straightforwardmedia.com ones and selected the option to recieve an e-mail when a winner was selected, but I haven't recieved any notfication to date.</p>
<p>Thanks, aMeng. Anyone else? How do you tell if one is legit or not?</p>
<p>would fastweb have it if it wasnt legit?</p>
<p>I'm not sure how they check these things. They have a lot of scholarships that look pretty sketchy, not requiring transcripts or anything, with ads all over the page (although College Confidential has those too, so that can't be <em>too</em> much of an indicator).</p>
<p>Anyone else have some experiences/ideas?</p>
<p>I also have applied to a straightforwardmedia.com scholarship, but have not recieved email notification like I had asked.</p>
<p>I received it but it is so hard to get. Only one per 3 month. And 500 is not that much compare to $1,000 of another scholarship that you could be doing.</p>
<p>You received it? Wow. I guess if anyone did, it would have been you. :)</p>
<p>i think any scholarship that doesn't charge u is real</p>
<p>i always wondered about the straightforwardmedia ones.. good to know they are legit.</p>
<p>I just got a response from Fastweb:</p>
<p>Thanks for your e-mail.</p>
<p>To be perfectly honest, we must admit upfront that we unfortunately
cannot guarantee that whether a sponsor is legitimate. We simply do not have the resources to do background checks on each and every sponsor we post on our site.</p>
<p>However, FastWeb does have a stringent vetting process in place--we
check the sponsors to make sure they are who they say they are, we never knowingly post scholarships that charge a fee and we are wary of scholarship sponsors who ask for suspicious information, just to name a few of the requirements we check for before posting an award on our service. We also take great pains to warn our members about what to look for in scholarship scams. Very, very infrequently, a sponsor gets through our net and we have to take them off of our site--but again, it is rare that we need to do so. As a member of FastWeb, you should feel confident that you can safely apply for each award found on our site.</p>
<p>If you come across certain scholarships that you are concerned about, by all means, let us know which ones your suspect may be a scam and we can look into that sponsor a little further.</p>
<p>They're real, but I think that they're virtually impossible to get. recyclingbinh06, how much time did you spend on your winning essay?</p>
<p>Nah legit or not, I will never win a scholarship based solely on an essay.</p>
<p>yeah. I supposedly got a straightforward media scholarship, but they kept asking for my paypal to send it to me because I was in Canada, and knowing that quite a number of people's paypal accounts are being jacked recently, I thought it might be a scam. Let's hope it turns out. I'll keep you posted.</p>
<p>(not that anyone is probably listening because this thread seems dead)</p>
<p>they followed through with sending me a cheque, so it seems that theyre just really unorganized and/or understaffed.</p>
<p>I normally to not respond to pages such as these; but I was searching the main website for Straightforwardmedia.com. I had just received an email that I had won the Recession Relief $500 scholarship. They asked me for a picture of myself, my mailing information and a short biography that they could post on their website. Never having won such a scholarship, I wanted to find out what constituted a short biography. I wanted to refer to an examply of what is expected. I came across this college confidential and SCAM. While I understand that many people fear the internet, sometimes you have to have faith that there are people/organizations out there who really want to help (and no strings attached). I never thought I would actually win, but desperate times call for desperate means and I figured that it was worth the effort. I figured that the worst that could happen would be that I lost the time that it took to apply. I am submitting the required information in good faith and I do believe that I will be awarded the funds. When I do apply for scholarships, I research who they are and the reason that motivates the giving. I rely on bursaries and scholarships to fund my education. I am writing to let you know that Straightforwardmedia IS legitimate. I am grateful to them for their aid. Keep the faith and good luck to you all.</p>