Private Colleges Are Using Facebook To Snoop On Potential Scholarship Applicants

Photo: Flickr / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

If you are competing for private college scholarships, you need to worry about more than getting your scholarship applications just right.A new survey of members of the National Scholarship Providers Association, whose members award more than $1 billion in prize money each year, reveals that a significant number of these scholarship organisations are researching applicants online. And they are primarily looking for reasons not to award you a scholarship.

According to the survey, which was conducted by the NSPA and Fastweb, the scholarship search engine, about a quarter of scholarship providers are using search engines and/or social media sites to check up on applicants.

Why Scholarship Providers Snoop

Here are the top reasons that private scholarship providers cited for researching award candidates:

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