Hi, I’ve been looking for scholarships a lot lately since I just finished high school, and I think I found a scam. When I made my scholarship spreadsheet, I just added all the ones that I qualified for and I was going to potentially apply to. The scholarship I believe is a scam is the Abbott and Fenner scholarship. Link to it: https://abbottandfenner.com/scholarships.php
Here’s why I believe it’s a scam and some things I would suggest looking out for:
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Old copyright- The copyright is from 2017 and hasn’t been renewed.
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ALL stock photos- The images used on the website are all stock images. When I did a quick google image search of the photo on the scholarship page of the website, I found the image used on two different websites. (There’s probably more but those were the first two that showed up). Here are the links: https://www.effortlesshr.com/blog/things-that-will-keep-your-team-satisfied/ and https://www.legacyadmissions.com/executive—team-coaching.html.
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The people in the images don’t match. Usually, companies want to market their own people on their website so they seem more approachable and people are more likely to do business with them
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They don’t have their team members listed. Again, people want to be able to search who the best people to do business with are
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The ‘about us’ page is incredibly short and doesn’t really explain what they do
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There’s no address except for a city- If you were going to hire someone, wouldn’t you want to know if they’re even close enough to where you’re located?
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You can’t contact them- As I said above, there’s no address. But there’s also no email or even a phone number. The ‘contact us’ page is a page where you fill in your information and they contact you back. Kind of shady in my opinion.
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Their privacy policy is incredibly short- I don’t know if this is a red flag, but companies usually have super long policies that are page after page of information
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When googling the company, the only thing that shows up is information about the scholarship. There’s nothing related to the company or reviews on it
Hopefully this helps other people not put in the effort to apply to this scholarship since, in my opinion, it’s obviously a scam if you look close enough.
Hey all, so I actually generated an account on Reddit to specifically to reply to this post. This is something I hear about every year around this time. People Facebook message me about once a year asking how I got this Abbott and Fenner Scholarship. Yes, I got this scholarship a few years back. I wrote a short essay and received a check in the mail from “Abbott and Fenner Business Consultants.” I found the scholarship through my high school’s list of scholarships to apply for. I had a similar worry when I applied, but as a young student I was naive and I took the risk. It literally paid off. I will add it is a very atypical way for a scholarship to work, looking back now, does seem suspicious. I applaud all of you who are keeping your “bs detectors” on as you search the internet for scholarships, but this in fact is real, or at least I got $1000 dollars when I applied. I can’t say if they haven’t decided suddenly to become scam artists.
If you still have doubts, try reaching out to previous winners, and who knows maybe you’ll pop up in my inbox. Best of luck if you choose to apply!
I honestly don’t think the Abbott & Fenner Scholarship is a scam.
I found several of the winners on Linkedin and because the scholarship is listed on Fastweb, I know the company has been vetted and the award verified. I am a scholarship provider and I know exactly how hard it is to get a scholarship listed on Fastweb because of the approval process.
Apply or don’t apply, it’s totally your choice, but I would encourage you to apply. Monica Matthews
Wow seriously! I already applied to this one 😤😑😭
Thank you so much! I thought something was up when I emailed them asking to clarify the essay prompt (which I clearly already looked at if I’m asking for clarification) and they just redirected me to that link! They said all the information I need is there and they didn’t even clarify what part of the prompt meant. Suuuuper weird.