Although University financial aid officials yesterday said they could not yet evaluate a new non-profit scholarship search agency, they said they are skeptical of the usefulness of search services in general and have found them "misleading" in the past.

The Scholarship Bank--a six-month old Los Angeles-based service designed to locate scholarship funds in the private sector--is the first service offering a money-back guarantee stipulating that each student will receive at least $100 in aid or have the service fee of $35 refunded.

"I have never come in contact with anyone who has gotten money using one of these services," Luann Maywald, staff assistant in the Financial Aid Office, said yesterday.

Martha C. Lyman, director of financial aid, said yesterday search services have listed in the past the names of specific Harvard funds. This has mistakenly led "students to believe they didn't need to be admitted to get money, could get money even if they didn't need it, and could apply directly to Harvard for money from a specific fund," she added.

Equity

It is too soon to evaluate the Scholarship Bank's performance, Maywald said, but she added that "if they guarantee money back instead of just a list of sources, and in fact do it without a major inconvenience, that sounds fair."

Steven Danz, program director of the Scholarship Bank, said the service has refunded at the student's word the money to anyone trying the sources on his list and receiving less than $100.

The service provides students with a print-out of scholarships, Loans, and work study sources they might qualify for. Danz said the present refund rate is 3 per cent.

Mary Ann Maxin, executive director of the Scholarship Search--the largest and only other nationwide search service--said yesterday the only guarantee her company provides "is to locate a maximum of 25 sources, nothing more."

Margot Gill, fellowship counselor at the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning, said yesterday Harvard students "can serve themselves better by doing the research work on their own."