photo by steed media service

Educational Relations Associates, FastWeb.com

Fact: In 2007, one out of every three potential college students in the country visited FastWeb.com. The Web site was created in 1995 to offer students support and information on choosing and paying for school, while also helping them identify employment and internships in their particular areas of study. Jasmin Dobson and Sylvia Caballero, FastWeb educational relations associates, manage and monitor student accounts for the nation’s leading online scholarship search service.

Over 16,000 high schools and 3,600 colleges endorse FastWeb, not to mention that more than 34 million students have used the site’s services since its inception. Users fill out meticulous surveys about themselves and their academic pursuits. That information is in turn applied to match applicants with the opportunity that best meets their aspirations.

“We try to get as detailed and specific as possible when matching them with scholarships, to basically allow them to be eligible for as much as possible that fits their specific criteria,” says Dobson. “Anything from whether they’re left-handed, right-handed, ethnicity, religious affiliation — all that stuff.”

Dobson and Caballero’s efforts support FastWeb’s objective, which is to make sure that all of the bright young minds in the U.S. get an equal chance to pursue an education, without having to deal with the typical obstacles students face.

“We all know tuition is rising every single year and, unfortunately, government and scholarship funding isn’t rising at the same levels, so we want to make sure students have every opportunity possible,” Caballero says. –gavin philip godfrey

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