Thursday, November 19, 2009

There Are A Lot Of College Financial Aid Scams To Avoid

By Neo Smith

Going to college can bring upon a huge amount of debt. There are enough of financial aid available for you to get funding for your college education, but be informed that there are also numerous college money scams around. These scammers are looking for any opportunities to cheat college students desperately seeking financial assistance. You should be very careful when looking for financial aid for college to avoid falling into the traps of college money scams.

The big money college scams are the Federal or personal loans scams, and the second scamare fake scholarships or free money that students don't have to repay. Most frequently, the scammers mail their offerings directly to students' or parents' houses, demanding money up front, this initial payment are supposedly to cover application processing fees. According to the Federal Trade Commission enquiry on financial aid, scholarship or loan scams broadly speaking cheat people out of $50 to $1,000 when paying for these application fees. The results shows that over 100,000 families are being swindled annually and is still increasing. This event may become worse due to today's liquidity crisis, the college money scams may drastically increase because less lenders being in the market, and more students seeking financial assistance.

So, the question is how does one recognize a scam? At Times , it cab be tough to see the difference between the valid loan / scholarship suppliers than the scammers. Try and remember this, the golden rule is to avoid any offers that just appear too good to be true, and keep an eye out for words with misprints or firms that don't leave any contact info.

There are some college money scammers that send letters on loans offers using letterheads that really look like the Department of Education. They fake the letterhead to make them look very real. In Truth the Department of Education never solicit people to loans, so any mail or email received from any government agency should be illegitimate and probably is a scam. Remember that, scholarships and grants should not contain any up front fees.

There are numerous methods to receive funding for you or your children's college education. Always be careful of college money scams, they are around to take your money. When you receive any offers either loans, scholarships, or grants that look to be too good or carry the above signs, just avoid them at all costs. Trust me, you will yourself a lot of head aches later on. - 29904

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment