Fraudulent scholarship offers work on the same principle as fraudulent job offers: hope, urgency, and a payment that must be made now.
Check one: does the programme exist as described
Find the programme on the official website of the funding body or university, not through a link sent to you. Compare the deadline, the coverage and the eligibility rules against what you were told. Discrepancies are the point of the exercise.
Check two: does a genuine scholarship ask for this payment
Established government and university scholarships do not charge an application fee payable to an individual, and do not require a “processing” or “seat reservation” payment. Some legitimate applications involve a modest official fee paid through a published channel. That is different from a transfer to a personal account.
Check three: the address it came from
Look at the actual sending domain rather than the display name. Official correspondence comes from the institution’s own domain. A free email account, or a domain that merely resembles the institution’s, is decisive.
Other signs
- An award you never applied for
- Pressure to confirm within hours
- A request for passport scans and bank details before any offer document
- Spelling and formatting errors in what claims to be an official letter
If in doubt
Contact the institution through the phone number or address on its official website, never through contact details supplied in the message itself.