An expert review of FinAid.Org: FinAid.Org Review 12

In order to carefully review FinAid.Org, we must review FinAid.Org with the same set of criteria we use for other scholarship search databases. We review the scholarship history of FinAid.Org, the scholarship database creativity of finaid.org, their scholarship published claims of finaid.org vs. documented facts by government or independent agencies concerning finaid.org. We review other factors about Schlolarships.Com also. We review factors as their Scholarship Yield, Scholarship Quotient, FaceBook habits, their receptivity to competitive scholarship listing sources, the quality of their scholarship listings, their scholarship advertising claims, their duplicate scholarship listings, their excluded scholarship listings, their association with other scholarship listing services, and the success rate of their scholarship recipients, as well as what third-party agencies or organizations that FinAid.Org is associated with.

Purpose of the FinAid.Org review.

The purpose of the scholarship review of FinAid.Org is to assist scholarship seekers and educators evaluate the merits and services of FinAid.Org. This review also touches upon the FastWeb scholarship search service since both FastWeb and FinAid.Org tend to be alter-egos of each other. This report additionally concerns the quality, credibility, integrity, and legitimacy of the FinAid.Org scholarship search service amongst its peers in the scholarship search service industry. We conduct a detailed review of all major scholarship search service companies, and post our reviews without charge on our websites and scholarship blogs.

Login Requirements for FinAid.Org: Catch and Bait Method

Scholarship applicants using FinAid.Org are required to enter or create a personal profile to logon before using the FinAid.Org search service. Once your email has been served up, and you have created your scholarship profile, then you can expect to receive numerous, and constant emails from finaid.org. If you do not want to receive mass bulk emails from FinAid.Org then simply be sure to not check any boxes that require a subscription or sharing of your email address.

Superfluous finaid.org Scholarship Search Features

Finaid.org has numerous features for scholarship seekers. Not all the features, however, are really necessary. Many of the features of FinAid.Org are essentially the same features found on many other scholarship search services’ websites, such as its primary competitor, Scholarships.Com. For example, finaid.org provides a scholarship box with certain features, such as the GPA. The GPA feature is non-functional. When a prospective scholarship seeker applies actual input to the search box, the search feature produces a very vague response like “Award: $10000 Deadline: Varies. The [xxx] Scholars Program is open to underrepresented and first – generation college – bound students.” There is no hint or evidence if the scholarship is specific to your region, location, major, or what all the details are about. Instead, FinAid.org requires user to “login” for more information instead of simply presenting all of the information at first. This is the Catch-And-Bait method that many scholarship search companies use. The “catch” is your personal login details and the “bait” is the vague scholarship. Unlike Scholarships.Com, we did not observe any so-called Success stories claimed by FinAid.Org. Typically, claims of “success stories” by scholarship search companies are irrelevant and meaningless because each scholarship applicant is different, and many scholarship applicants using FinAid.Org may not apply for the same scholarships.

Consumer Tests for finaid.org

FinAid.Org was tested in June 2012, March of 2013, and again in April 2013. Scholarship students were recruited to contact FinAid.Org via their social media channels. FinAid.Org DID NOT censor comments, or block our posts on social media channels. This demonstrates that FinAid.Org is practicing good scholarship ethics. Scholarships.Com, and College Prowler, by comparison, immediately policed the comments and censored them before potential scholarship applicants could be informed of the $25,000 Scholarships that we were sponsoring. Any scholarship search service that blocks, censors, or obstructs the objective of students seeking financial-aid is probably a scholarship search service that you do not want to rely upon.

FinAid.Org Like many Scholarship Search Services

Students need to know that not all scholarship search services are the same, but many rely upon the same scholarship database. Scholarship Search services, including Scholarships.Con, do differ from one another in several respects. Some scholarship search services are open to the public, and some scholarship search services are closed. Finaid.org has an open record for its social media channels like FaceBook, etc. For example, FastWeb was tested during this time period, and we were not blocked, censored, or obtructed. FinAid.Org, on the other hand, appears to have varying criteria for its database of scholarships, grants, or financial-aid, as well as who is entitled to visit and participate on its social media channels. The &#34criteria&#34 that is used appears to be arbitrary, capricious, selective, and certainly not uniform. Beware of Scholarship Search companies that create their own so-called &#34criteria&#34 to justify having a censored scholarship database, or censored social media channel.

Scholarship Yield of finaid.org

We will use the term Scholarship Yield. Scholarship Yield is a term invented by National Academy of American Scholars. A Scholarship Yield is a mathematical calculation using Calculus that helps to determine and measure the robustness of a scholarship database. In simple terms, Scholarship Yield helps to determine if a scholarship database is all fluff and no meat, and whether its data is fresh relative to the population-age it is serving. For the mathematical equation of the Scholarship Yield, please contact an NAAS Specialist.

We illustrated the concept of Scholarship Yield as it applies to another scholarship search company, scholarships.com in a prevous review. The Scholarship Yield of FinAid.Org is a function of its claimed 1.5 million scholarships vs. the population of eligible scholarship candidates, demographic data, an equalization factor.

If we use the figures provided by FinAid.Org, and their reported claims, then over the span of 10 years, the Scholarship Yield of FinAid.Org has not been impressive.

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