Drawing Scholarships
If you search online for unknown scholarships on any Internet search engine, you’ll find some of those search results has something called drawing scholarships or random scholarship drawings. You click on some to find that it seems legitimate, and apply to some in the hopes that you get something good out of it. You don’t have a whole lot to lose except your time – or maybe your privacy.
Just like millions of other students with a PC and the Internet, this seems like a very delightful and worthwhile attempt at cutting down your college tuition and personal cost. Money is hard to come by for a college student, especially when college cost so much today. Any student who knows how hard it is to scrape for cash despite having a job will not pass this opportunity. It’s too tempting and easy to apply for. But is it real? Is it worth the opportunity and risk? How can you tell if it’s a scam for companies to possibly steal your money, information or identity? Or are you just being too cautious to the point of being paranoid.
Random Drawing Scholarships: Clear Signs of a Winner
These scholarship drawings, also called lotteries, scholarship contests, scholarship sweepstakes and giveaways, have several points which you should consider very carefully. The first one is the company or school that is sponsoring or holding the contest. With different schools popping up with the search, make sure to check the legitimacy of the school’s name, location, and student body. Should the websites look shoddy (poorly designed, bad grammar or spelling, even a lack of photos of the school to view), an expired web page or almost no recent updates, or yield no results at all, then you should click off and consider looking elsewhere?
Also, most popular searches have a certain cash “prize”, ranging from $25 USD up to $10K, even going, higher or lower than that. While it sounds very tempting to go for something like that, the school’s online and offline legitimacy will help you decide if you’re actually going to win anything after all those entries. To speak in favor of some of them, however, there are student lotteries that DO reward a large amount of money for your academic expenses. The best way to find out, of course, is to check if the school has the power to make such claims.
Let’s start simple. ANYONE is a qualified participant, since it does play out like a lottery or sweepstakes contest, where people submit a form to be randomly (I repeat, RANDOMLY) selected by either a computer program or a school official. The winning results will then either be announced in the school website or directly mailed to the very lucky recipient of the cash.
Another way to actually win these random scholarship drawings is a university or company will make a massive search in social networks, contacts, or even search engines, for people to select after scrutinizing their profile. This can be done online, and in the school, college, or institution itself, with officials making the announcement in public, or more subtly by contacting the winner.
Who Benefits from Schools Drawing Scholarships Anyway?
The spectrum of drawing scholarships aren’t just for students, either; single parents, social workers, employees, military personnel… the list would go on. The companies’ goals are primarily to promote education among those who do not have the opportunity to make it on their own; these drawing scholarships, when genuine, are a boon to both winner and sponsor (who gets promoted everywhere, of course).
The institution rarely takes into account the winner’s academic profile, or their capacity as a working scholar, but they do keep a very close watch over these winners once it’s been announced. While it is rare for the sponsor to back out at any flaw the winner shows in using the cash (or the fame), there will be circumstances that force the university or the companies involved to take back what cash remains unspent.
Bottom line on Scholarship Drawings
The next time you stumble across a scholarship drawing online which will happen if your looking for student financial aid – apply to it if it seems legitimate and doen’t ask for too much personal information. That can always be given if you win. There is no need to provide it on your initial submission. Look into well known companies sponsoring random drawing scholarships and apply to those and see how their process works so you get an idea how an authentic one is being conducted and use that as your gage for all the others you then apply for. You will become good at deciding which ones are real and which ones are screaming SCAM.
Random Scholarships
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