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Scam and Eggs: The Pitfalls of Searching for Scholarships!Jun 28 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Our nation's superior educational system has this huge bag of Halloween candy that lasts all year and never runs out of goodies. It's called The Educational Scholarship System. Scholarships are awarded in the same vein as the Halloween motif, including the best "costume", best "presentation", "originality", and basically who's quick enough to shove the other kids aside and get their bag fulled first. There are scholarships for Italian-Americans, Children of Italians, People Who Wish They Were Italians, People Who Have Seen The Godfather Trilogy 300 Times, and Italians Who Wish They Were Enrico Caruso. My daughter doesn't sing like Enrico Caruso. Yet. For a $8,000 stipend, I'll have her singing like a canary on steroids in no time. I've started playing Opera tapes while she sleeps. She's been humming Figaro at breakfast lately. That's one of Three Tenors, so I figure we're about a third of the way there. Researching scholarships recently, I discovered something I may have overlooked in my drooling greed to get my hands on some cash for my daughter's education. SCAM!! Reading over the site at http://www.fastweb.com, I was warned to be careful about getting ripped off. "You should never have to send anything more than a postage stamp to get Financial Assistance", Fastweb advises. It's a good thing I read that, because I'm sure that the first organization that promised me a "guaranteed grant" would have gotten my $15 or $25 processing fee. Why? Because like anyone else, I want to believe in the system, in "something for nothing and your kicks for free". You figure if you work hard enough and apply yourself, then a piece of the American pie is served on your plate. All you have to do is open your mouth wide enough to make sure you take in as much as you can without gagging. Fastweb also warns not to follow up on any unsolicited grants. Through the miracle of insidious spider threads crawling through my computer like the Borg and tracking my private mail, I've been receiving said unsolicited invitations. "Let us do all the leg work for you! Just fill in your visa number and we'll take care of everything". I used the same rule of thumb for all my other unsolicited mail. DELETE before it blows up my computer. There are plenty of great scholarships out there. Just be careful not to fall for any SCAM and eggs!  |
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