The hardest part about going to college is paying for it. Very few people can pay for college straight out of their (golden and diamond-studded) pockets. So the rest of us turn to scholarships. Or occasionally, pirating, but that’s hardly worth mentioning. Doubloons don’t bring in as much money as they used to, and unfortunately, neither do coconuts.
Three doors, one waste of time
If you ever need a scholarship, the best ways of getting them are as follows:
- Official scholarships: Straight from the college itself. Brimming with confidence and the hope that one day, you will contribute to the shiny new library on campus. If you get a scholarship from your college of choice, don’t take it lightly. Accepting it will save you a lot of trouble in the long run, unless, of course, you don’t want to go to that school at all.
- Scholarships from tests or corporations: A high enough score PSAT will give you the chance to not only get money from big companies in the area but also colleges, which usually offer a special bonus scholarship exclusively for National Merit and National Merit Commended Scholars.
And then, there’s always scrounging (nature has always had a soft spot for scavengers), which is where FastWeb comes in. At first sight, this clustered, immensely busy site seems like a godsend, but it is not — not at all. Not only are the scholarships themselves often past their deadlines and of no use to me (I am not over 18 nor am I majoring in Neurolinguistics — although that sounds pretty interesting), but in order to access a great many of the scholarships, you have to click past an advertisement for an online college, the Army, or the Spanish Olive-Growers Union (if only). This is both tedious and annoying. It makes me feel as if FastWeb values its advertisers more than its users, and the only thing motivating me to continue using the site is the fact that college is expensive, and I would rather not live on Guadalupe Street in Austin selling oranges to passerby in order to earn my keep.
At the very least, I would sell sopapillas because of their crumbling, sugary goodness.
The best critique I ever read about FastWeb — alright, it’s the only one — is Steven Levy’s article in Newsweek, who was also aggravated that:
… before seeing the scholarships, the site required me to click “no thanks” to offers from survey companies, online universities and U.S. Navy recruiters … the pushiness of the ads gave me the impression that FastWeb knows that its users won’t bail because they’re desperate for college funds.
Steven Levy
At the very least, FastWeb should use less intrusive advertisements, clean its scholarship database, improve and simplify its profiling system, and perhaps rank the scholarships so that the most reliable and worthwhile ones get the most precedence. Why should we waste time making movies and signing up for other websites, trying to gather enough money for college when we can be concentrating on earning scholarships, instead of entering into drawings or contests, hoping that luck will be on our side when our name is drawn? A little more responsibility on FastWeb’s part could help to ensure that thousands more college students go without overwhelming loans, and that the worth of a student is always valued more than the price of their education.