Going to college can bring upon a mountain of debt. There are ton of financial aid available for you to get money for your college education, but be advised that there are also numerous college money scams around. These scammers are looking for any chances 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 bunkers 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 repay. Most frequently, the scammers mail their offerings directly to students' or parents' houses, asking for money up front, customarily they are going to ask you to pay for some forms of processing costs before they pay out the fund. According to 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 help.
So, the question is how does one recognize a scam? At Times , it cab be tough to see the difference between the legitimate loan / scholarship suppliers than the scammers. Try and remember this, the rule of thumb is to avoid any offers that just appear too good to be true, and keep a look out for words with typos 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 doesn't solicit consumers 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 get money for you or your children's college education. Always be conscious of college money scams, they are around to cheat your money. When you receive any money 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.