Fastweb is the most well-known online scholarship match database. To use Fastweb, students or parents must create an account and a profile that includes their personal and academic information, their parents’ information, and the student’s personal interest. Members are then matched to relevant scholarship opportunities. Fastweb accounts are available completely free of charge, and the site boasts access to roughly 1.5 million scholarships.

Since its initiation in 1995, Fastweb has continued to expand resources, becoming a one-stop shop for scholarships, internships, college information, and career resources.

College Resources

Fastweb offers a secondary search engine for colleges. Members can search colleges by state or by major. State searches will yield information about the state as well as most popular majors in the state. It also links to the most popular universities in the state. You can also see average tuition for instate and out-of-state students. If you search by major, it will show you popular universities for that major. You can also review a related majors list, and a list of popular scholarships that are related to the major.

In addition to college information, there are a wealth of articles about various college related topics including preparation for SAT and ACT exams, test taking tips, articles about different colleges and college application timelines, college student life issues, and volunteer opportunities.

Financial Aid Information

Fastweb offers a series of articles tools, and information on financial aid. Students can learn about how much college costs, sources other than scholarship to pay for college, what to do to properly fill out the FAFSA, and more. They can also get information on different types of student loans and private loans, as well as financial planning during college.

Like the scholarship section, students can sort this financial aid information into categories such as military aid or graduate school grants to help them find the most pertinent information to them.

Once a student has read through some of the articles, they can use some of the budgeting tools such as College Cost Projector to estimate costs and savings.

Internships and Career Planning

With the goal of providing students every possible avenue by which to pay their fees and tuition, Fastweb has a secondary database for internships and part-time jobs. In addition to job and internship postings, students can access a series of articles providing advice on writing cover letters and resumes, interview etiquette, and much more. Their search database is linked with the jobs database Monster.com to give member’s resumes wider visibility.