In just three years, a Lake County corporation has grown from an experimental offspring of one of several fee-based scholarship search firms in the United States to become what many experts consider the nation’s leading free on-line scholarship search firm.
About 1.5 million students have looked for college scholarship leads free of charge this year via Financial Aid Search Through the Web, LLC, a North Chicago research firm better known as fastWEB.
When it debuted on the Internet in 1995, it was just an offshoot of Student Services Inc., a 2-year-old research firm that did business the old-fashioned way: print copy and the U.S. mail. But at its recent new record of 7,000 users a day compared with 25 people per day in 1995 or even 1,000 per day in 1996, fastWEB is putting the parent company into mothballs.
“Some people still don’t have Internet access. But for all intents and purposes, the fee-based Student Services is pretty much phased out,” said Mark Rothschild, fastWEB senior vice president of product development and student services.
He was quick to point out that even though the Internet service does not charge students a fee, it still has to be paid for. “It is not free, just as radio and television programs are not free. It’s all paid for by advertising,” he said.
That is why students will see ads, from phone and computer companies to sporting goods, when they go into the search service.
The Internet possibilities are what prompted Highland Park CPA Leon Heller and a group of investors to buy the business from its founders and his friends, Larry and Susan Organ of Winnetka in 1996. Heller, fastWEB’s 38-year-old chairman, was in the mortgage business when he bought out the corporation.
When asked what the attraction was, Heller said, “Instinct. The Internet was just becoming commonly used. I felt a scholarship search service on-line allowed for many more users. And I thought it was one of the best uses of the Internet,” he said.
FastWEB, however, was not even a gleam in the eye of the Organs when they started the parent company, Student Services, in Chicago in 1993. Student Services owed its existence to the frustration that Larry Organ experienced in the mid-1980s when he wanted to attend graduate school.
Organ, then a Canadian citizen, wanted to continue his education in the United States after he completed undergraduate studies at Toronto’s York University in 1985, but he lacked the means to do so.
“I wanted to get a business degree here, but I couldn’t afford it. It was outrageously expensive,” said the 39-year-old Organ, who emigrated about 10 years ago and became a U.S. citizen four years ago. “I figured other people have similar problems affording college. I thought I could fill that need with a financial aid scholarship research service.”
That assumption was proven true by the fact that 60,000 to 80,000 people used the company’s $45 fee-based scholarship search in each of its first three years, followed by the approximately 2 million people who since have used the free on-line service that he added.
“We had already created a database as part of Student Services. FastWEB was a natural extension. This was just when the Internet was getting going,” Organ said. It also was about the time he moved the business to North Chicago for an easier commute and a favorable lease.
That is, the City of North Chicago is the stone-and-mortar address. Better known to scholarship providers, financial aid officers and students is the Internet address of www.fastweb.com.
A combination of its mega-database of more than 400,000 scholarships, daily updated information, application tips, easy-to-print-out application request forms and a database system that precisely matches students to scholarships based on their profile questionnaires has made the firm’s Internet home the site recommended by many high school counselors and college financial aid advisers.
“It’s the quarterback of scholarship services,” Stevenson High School college counselor David Boyle said. Stevenson is among 5,000 U.S. high schools and colleges that are fastWEB members. Membership is free and entitles the schools to posters, brochures, a quarterly newsletter and assorted scholarship-financial aid information.
“FastWEB is a wonderful resource for students and parents,” Boyle said. “It brings it all together in terms of students putting in information and then a few minutes later acquiring data on a number of scholarships that can be checked further for eligibility. A student might have to go through five different books to find the same scholarships.”
“What’s key about the service is that it’s free to students,” he added, “and they can remain anonymous if they’d like. We recommend it to probably every student who walks into the college resource center.”
Apparently, that also is true for several colleges with Internet addresses where prospective students can “walk” into the college’s student aid page.
In a quick check of the financial aid section of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and National-Lewis University in Evanston, two randomly selected colleges on an Internet directory of colleges and universities with home pages, both turned up links to fastweb.com.
The North Chicago firm was the primary link in the National-Lewis University financial aid section’s source of scholarship services. And of the private on-line scholarship search firms listed on the Michigan site, fastweb.com was the only one highlighted.
Michigan’s link to fastWEB came just after the site’s suggestion to start with FinAid (www.fin/aid.org.), a premier source for information about financial aid and scholarship scams.
But a student starting at FinAid also is likely to go to fastWEB. The FinAid site’s founder, Mark Kantrowitz, considered by educators and government officials alike as the guru of financial aid, includes other search services’ links, but he favors fastWEB.
“They are the largest (listing the most scholarship providers) and most proactive in trying to meet students’ needs. They are always adding new features based on their interface with their users. When students suggest something, they do it. With other services, the interface is not there. Most haven’t changed format since going on the Web,” Kantrowitz said.
He ought to know. A research scientist for a Pittsburgh-based software company in what he calls his “real life,” Kantrowitz has been operating his free financial aid page on the Web since 1994, which was before the scholarship services came on-line. Indeed, he takes some of the credit for spurring Organ to add a fee-free Internet search service.
“I contacted the scholarship search services and suggested they offer their service free to students on the Internet so they would no longer be seen as the `evil people’ who were taking money from students. I said if they make the service free, it will attract many students and therefore advertisers,” he said.
“FastWEB was the only one to bite. They agreed to offer their service free on the Web in return for prime billing on my Web site. They were the only one on the Web for a year and a half. Then others woke up when they saw their traffic decline. After all, why pay for something when you can get it for free? Slowly the others got on the Web. But FastWEB is the most popular database.”
Students and sponsors like it best because of fastWEB’s good database, easy-to-use but thorough format and careful match of student eligibility with scholarship requirements.
“It has the tightest match,” he said.
That is important, according to Kantrowitz, because claims by other sites of thousands of scholarships means little because the finds made by the sites often are not appropriate.
“A new sponsor (scholarship provider) in fastWEB’s database may still get flooded with responses, but they will all be appropriate,” said Kantrowitz, who has continued his input under the Heller administration.
“Leon and his group have strengthened some of the best features of their database,” he said. “They are providing a real service.”
And that service is expanding, according to Rothschild.
Through his contact with scholarship providers, he realized that the providers had no way to share their thoughts and concerns. So this year he formed an association for them called the National Scholarship Provider Alliance. More than 80 scholarship providers, including Coca-Cola representatives, attended the first conference, which was held in October near O’Hare International Airport under fastWEB’s aegis.
FastWEB also recently added its trademarked “E-Scholarships,” a hookup it has with some scholarship providers that allows students to obtain applications and apply for scholarships electronically.
FastWeb, which already offers advice such as, “Apply. You cannot win awards or receive funds for which you do not apply,” is also starting a periodic newsletter for its student users (it already has one for parents) that offers tips.
“We’re constantly evolving with more links to colleges and added services,” Rothschild said. “But we mind our knitting, which is helping students find scholarships. The other stuff is secondary.”
Minding the “knitting,” which includes constantly updating information, helped St. Charles mom Carol Leonard locate the scholarship that daughter Madeline snagged.
But first, Carol Leonard went the fee-based service route. When that proved fruitless, she turned to the Internet, where she found fastWEB and several scholarship possibilities. Through fastWEB, the Leonards found the Charitabulls Scholarship Program sponsored by the Chicago Bulls, and Madeline won a $2,000 scholarship that she is using this year as an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
“Most colleges tell you to go to fastWEB,” Leonard said, adding that she also tried two other sites that were helpful but not as good.
“I think it’s really great site. I paid one of those search services big money. That was a complete waste,” she said, adding that for about $150 she received some scholarship leads she could have gotten free at the Web site and several non-leads because they were out of date.
“The Bulls scholarship did not originally appear (on fastWEB),” she added, “but it did in an update because Kane County was later included in the counties where students could apply. Even now, we are hearing about scholarships that undergrads can apply for. The other thing is they don’t sell your name. We don’t get junk mail.”
The popular free Internet service is not just for undergrads, according to fastWEB officials. Rothschild pointed out that though postgraduate dollars are scarcer, they do exist.
Fifth-year Kansas State University student Jennifer Long of Roeland Park, Kan., is thankful a friend told her to try fastWEB, because Long’s four-year scholarship ended before she completed her studies. Long, a food-service and management student, learned about a $1,000 scholarship, offered by the National Restaurant Association, through fastWEB. She applied and won.
“I liked fastWEB because it’s free, it doesn’t take a lot of time and it’s a good resource. It finds leads you may not even know to look for,” Long said.
The restaurant association’s dollars, which added to two scholarships she heard about through her school (a $1,000 grant from the American Dietetic Association and a $2,000 grant from the Association of College and University Food Services), mean that Long can complete her degree program by the end of the school year.
Helping students locate scholarships has had an interesting side effect on the people at fastWEB. They saw that they were helping an ever-growing number of students find matches from a set number of scholarship dollars. Their conclusion was that the other side of the equation, the number of scholarships and scholarship providers, also needed to be expanded.
Heller explained: “We’re finding that even though more and better matches between the providers and students is bringing the lesser known scholarships to more people’s attention, it could also result in shifting scholarships in a finite pool.
“We came to realize that more effort has to go into increasing the number of scholarships available. Our mission is not just to get the right scholarships for our students and the right students applying for the scholarships, but also to get more scholarships. That has to be part and parcel of our existence. Because there is a large pool of qualified applicants, we have to enlarge the scholarship field.”
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Finding scholarships on fastWEB that match a person’s qualifications is as easy as one, two, three (and then four, five, six, seven and eight).
1. Enter fastweb.com on your Internet search engine.
2. At the selections page, click on “Scholarship Search-fastWEB.”
3. At the fastWEB site, click “Start the fastWEB scholarship search.”
4. Now the process of filling out a profile questionnaire begins. The more connections a person can tap from heritage, clubs and volunteer work to parents’ jobs and military service, the more scholarships will turn up as matches.
5. When the profile is complete, click as directed to enter a personal mailbox and go to “See results of scholarship search.”
6. Pull up and print each listing of interest. Listings include value, application deadline, description and contact.
7. Click on the regular or customized form request in the listing, print and mail to receive more information and an application.
8. Check on helpful information by clicking “local and federal aid” on the home page and “application suggestions and additional resources” at the mailbox page.
