Sunday, November 15, 2009

There Are A Lot Of College Financial Aid Scams To Avoid

By Nick Lesly

Getting a College Degree can bring upon a huge amount of debt. There are plenty of financial aid available for you to get funding for your college education, but be informed that there are also many another college money scams around. These scammers are looking for any opportunities to cheat college students desperately seeking financial aid. You should be very careful when hunting 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 scam is related to fake scholarships or free money that students don't have to pay back. Most recently, the scammers mail their offerings directly to students' or parents' homes, asking for money up front, this initial payment are supposedly to cover application processing fees. Reported by the Federal Trade Commission enquiry on financial support, scholarship or loan scams generally cheat people out of $50 to $1,000 when paying for these application fees. The results shows that over 100,000 families are being cheated annually and is still rising. 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 aid.

So, the question is how does one recognize a scam? Occasionally , it cab be tough to differentiate between the valid loan / scholarship suppliers than the scammers. Try and remember this, the rule of thumb is to steer away from any offers that just appear too good to be true, and keep an eye out for words with misprints or businesses that don't leave any contact info.

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

There are numerous methods to get 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 money offers either loans, scholarships, or grants that look to be too good or have the above signs, just avoid them at all costs. Trust me, you will save a lot of head aches later on.

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