Yes, the same network that made the phrase “It’s T-Shirt Time” famous, brings you a unique Facebook application called My College Dollars. The app scours the web for scholarships opportunities based on the information in your Facebook profile — genius! Using the app also qualifies you for a chance to win tickets to the VMAs and cash prizes.
What’s really cool about the app isn’t so much the information (which has always been available online), but that it’s geared toward users who might not otherwise be aware of all the college financial aid opportunities and information out there. My College Dollars was the brainchild of Devin Valencia, winner of the Get Schooled Affordability Challenge contest. Her winning entry gave her the opportunity to work with designers and a $100,000 budget to create this app. MTV worked in collaboration with The College Board, the Get Schooled campaign, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the app yesterday.
In addition to the scholarship alerts, there’s also a FAFSA guideline, a deadline calendar, an “ask the expert” feature, and links to other resources. And, because MTV is involved, would you expect it to not be enhanced with super star power? The app is peppered with inspiring messages about the importance of education from music artists, actors, and athletes.
Check it out here, and let us know what you think of it.
A lot of people like to get organized in January, and when you’re preparing to go to college, there are some key things students need to during the first days and weeks of the year, too. Maybe you’re already suffering from senioritis, or feeling overwhelmed by all the details required in the college application process. But take a deep breath and don’t let those gray winter skies (unless you are lucky enough to live in a state with perpetual sunshine) get you down. Instead, attack January with a new attitude looking to the future – graduating high school and going to college.
Remember all the school work you did during the fall? It may be a hazy memory for you, but many colleges want to look at your fall semester results as part of the college application process, according to CollegeBoard. One of the reasons for doing so is that colleges want to make sure you kept up your grades and didn’t drop any classes, so be proud of yourself if had a strong semester! And be sure to put this at the top of your to-do list: Ask your counselor to send your fall semester grades to colleges with your application in their hands.
As soon as Jan. 1 hits, you also can send in your application for federal aid for college, known as the FAFSA. Getting it in as soon as possible (and filled out CORRECTLY) is not just good for federal grant and loan money, but it will put you in the running for state- or school-based scholarships, grants, and loans, which can be granted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Submitting the FAFSA online also allows you to cut out any extra time it would take for your paperwork to be received.
Those are two big steps for high school seniors in January, and getting them done can make a huge difference when it comes to getting into the college of your choice and affording tuition next fall.
Thursday is Bill of Rights Day and it’s a day for you to possibly get bills – dollar bills, that is – for college. Singers Ke$ha and Blake Shelton are among the celebrities involved in a Dec. 15 tweet-athon, in celebration of the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment. Let’s hear it for free speech!
The “Free to Tweet” effort encourages students ages 14 to 22 to share on Twitter how they enjoy their right to free expression. The best student Tweets – using #freetotweet – will win one of 22 scholarships, for $5,000. That’s a total of $110,000 in scholarships, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Other singers – Brad Paisley, Frankie Ballard, Darius Rucker, Joe Nichols, John Oates, Wynonna Judd, Sarah Jarosz, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Elenowen, Jana Kramer, Joanna Smith, and The Civil Wars – will be joining in with their tweets.
To be part of the scholarship contest, your tweet can stand alone or be linked to original content on a website or another type of social media. A panel of educators and First Amendment experts will review the entries and choose the scholarship winners.
So celebrate Bill of Rights Day – created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 – by expressing yourself via social media and trying to win cash for school. We’ll be watching your tweets from @CollegeBoundNet!
I had thought that National Louis University’s Groupon for a college course was pretty cool, but the news about Seton Hall University sort of blows it out of the water.
The New Jersey university is planning a two-thirds discount tuition incentive for early applicants who meet these outstanding qualifications: top 10% of their high school class and either a combined score of at least 1,200 on math and reading portions of SAT (no less than 550 on either) or an ACT score of at least 27. The discount currently equates to about $21,000 shaved off the tuition bill.
It gets even better: New Jersey residents have long enjoyed the in-state tuition rates of the state university, Rutgers, but this proposed discount evens out the two tuition bills. About 70 percent of Seton Hall’s undergrads hail from New Jersey, so that will make for a lot of happy students. But the happiness will extend outside the borders of the Garden State, too, because the price reduction will now make Seton Hall the less expensive option for out-of-state students when compared to Rutgers out-of-state rates.
The New York Times reports that Seton Hall is the first school to offer a tuition discount of this magnitude. Considering the amazing potential the school will have to amass a stellar incoming class next year, it only remains to be seen if other schools will follow suit.
I have young cousins who live in New Jersey and who are pretty darn smart. I can only hope they stay that way–and that Seton Hall’s policy stays this way, too.
A company called Escuchame (“Listen up!” in Spanish), which bills itself as “a virtual, global, bilingual Community of Smart Latinas,” has released a list of over 350 college scholarships for Hispanic and Latino students.
The list is worth its weight in gold if you’re a Latino or Hispanic college-bound student looking for ways to finance your education, but it’s free when you register (also free!) on Escuchame’s website. There, students will find the name, award amount, description, eligibility requirements, deadlines, and contact information for each of the scholarships; the list is also available in Spanish.
Deborah Aguiar-Velez, Escuchame’s co-founder and chief executive producer, decided to gather the scholarship information after speaking to many Latino students and their parents. “Everyone kept asking the same questions,” she says. “‘How can I afford to go to college? How can I compete for scholarships when I don’t even know what scholarships are out there?’ [Escuchame] knew we had to step up and fill this need.”
Escuchame plans to update the list regularly, so if you hear of a new scholarship, feel free to give them a heads up by emailing the team at escuchame@escuchame.org.
Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Raquel Velez says, “People are spending hours online, looking for scholarships, when really they should be focusing on studying and applying to schools. Having a centralized list that’s freely available makes the whole process of finding money for college easier on everyone.”
Incoming college freshman in Georgia got a shock recently when a popular scholarship program that had allowed any student with a 3.0 GPA to get free college tuition was drastically changed. Many students were relying on the HOPE scholarship, a program that was suffering financially, to attend a Georgia college or university – now they’re scrambling to figure out how to pay for college.
My family was able to benefit from the program, which began in 1993, when my smart sister, Heather, attended Georgia Tech, and I know they were glad to have that extra financial help. The program has helped more than 1 million students pay for college, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia isn’t the only state with a college scholarship program. Other programs, which are funded by the lottery, are in states such as Florida and Tennessee.
In Georgia, the state scaled back the number of HOPE scholarship recipients, which raised the bar for students, making it tougher to get the full amount for tuition. Students who are the high school valedictorian or salutatorian will get a full scholarship, as well as those with at least a 3.7 GPA in high school and a 1200 on the SAT’s math and verbal sections. Students must keep a 3.3 GPA in college to keep renewing the scholarship money, but there’s no money for books and fees for anyone.
Students with a 3.0 GPA will get some scholarship money, but the amount could vary from year to year. The AJC reported that students this fall will get 90 percent of current tuition – and that doesn’t account for expected double-digit hikes in tuition on some campuses.
The changes reiterate that the most worthy students are going to benefit from the largest amounts of financial assistance. This time, being worthy doesn’t mean based on your financial background, your college essay, or your extracurricular activities. While those are factors that some scholarship programs weigh heavily, the changes to this Georgia scholarship program points out that you have to do your best in school.
The good news for Georgia students? Being the smartest and most successful students in the classroom come with rich rewards.
The next time you go to shopping, think about how one of the stores could be paying you to go to college!
As it keeps getting more expensive to attend college, retailers like Wal-Mart, Kohls, and Nordstrom are among non-academic organizations who are lessening some students’ financial burden of going to college.
Some of Wal-Mart’s scholarships are for family members of employees, but at least one – the Sam Walton Community Scholarship – is for people not connected with the store. It gives $3,000 to graduating seniors with at least a 2.5 cumulative GPA and a demonstrated financial need. The company awarded $9 million in academic scholarships for the 2010-2011 school year.
The Kohls Cares Scholarship program celebrates students who are doing a great job volunteering in their communities. It plans to give more than $415,000 in scholarships and prizes to more than 2,100 kids this year – regional winners get a $1,000 college scholarship and national winners get $10,000 in scholarships.
Even more expensive retailers, like Nordstrom, are giving back to students. Nordstrom has awarded college scholarships of $10,000 to hard-working high schoolers since 1994. You need to be a high school junior with at least a 2.7 GPA, have participated in community activities, and plan on attending a four-year college or university in the U.S.
Esmeralda Jimenez, one of 40 students year who earned a Nordstrom Scholarship by writing a 500-word essay on how she could improve the community, state, and world, says she had to be honest with herself and recognized that she couldn’t change anything without first helping her family. She says on Nordstrom’s website: “I needed to give my family financial help so they could have a better life and be OK once they retired.”
Beauty retailer ULTA is also giving more than $100,000 in scholarships this year to female students in 13 U.S. cities through the 2011 Enrich, Empower & Enlighten Scholarship program. Each winner – chosen based on community involvement, academic success, leadership qualities, and commitment to continuing their education – will receive an $8,000 scholarship.
But hurry! A lot of these and other scholarship deadlines are in May, so you’ll need to work hard for that money! And if you catch a sale along the way, even better!
Think you’ve missed out on college scholarships? Think again. There’s money out there, and it’s not just offered up by the schools themselves. Here are three contests offering up to $5,000 and with early May deadlines, so get moving and enter to win!
Great American Grad contest
Write 200 words or less about what makes you a great American grad in this contest by Great American Cookies (the one with the yummy cookie cakes). The winner will get $5,000.
Put this on your list of things to do now because the deadline is May 2. Here’s a snippet from one of the entries you’ll be competing against in the public vote, like an American Idol for grads:
“What makes me a Great American Grad? That is a very hard question to answer, but I’ll give it a shot. This year I will be graduating from high school as well as receiving 54 college credits. For the past two years, I have attended my local community college and taken all of my courses there. This has allowed me to aim to obtain my high school diploma and come very close to receiving my Associates degree, all while I’m still 18! I have been blessed to advance so much before even graduating high school and this money would be another great blessing to advance, just as great as the cookies!” Briana from Kissimmee, FL
American Fire Sprinkler Association Scholarship Program
This organization will give 10 college scholarships worth $2,000 each to students who win its annual contest. So what do you have to do? Read an essay the organization provides about automatic fire sprinklers and answer a 10-question multiple-choice test about the essay (it’s open-book, so you can print the essay beforehand to use it during the test). Each question you answer right gets you an entry into the scholarship drawing. Sound good? You have until May 3 to try for this scholarship.
We’ve mentioned the Ayn Rand contests before, but the cash is so good that we have to remind you to take a shot at it. The individual novel contest deadlines have passed, but if you have read Ayn Rand novels during school – either as a class requirement or on your own – you may want to look at this contest coming up. Write an essay on how Ayn Rand’s works have influenced you, and you could win $50 to $2,000.
You’ll need to make some time to write the essay, which has to be between 700 and 1,500 words. The last day for submissions is May 14, so this may be something you’ll need to work on this weekend or next weekend.
There’s cash for college out there, so take some time and go after it. Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky few to win!
America was forever changed after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, and no one knows this better than those who lost loved ones on the morning of September 11, 2001. Many charitable organizations have been founded in the nearly 10 years since that day in order to support those affected by the tragedy, one of which is the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund.
The Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund awards millions of dollars in need-based college scholarships each year to students who are the dependent children, spouses, or domestic partners of those who were killed or permanently disabled by the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. For the 2009/2010 academic year alone, $9.8 million was awarded to nearly 700 individuals. Since 2002, when the scholarship fund first started, more than $47.8 million in scholarships have been given out to around 1,400 students who were so closely affected by 9/11.
The fund start with a $1 million pledge and a $2 million grant from the Lumina Foundation. In a show of bipartisanship, former president Bill Clinton and senator Bob Dole joined forces to get the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund noticed throughout the world. As a result, more than $125 million was raised by more than 20,000 corporations, agencies, groups, and individuals.
It’s incredible to think that many of the children of 9/11 victims are now just about college age, and it’s wonderful that something like the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund exists. The fund is meant to provide financial support once individuals have tapped other sources and scholarships for aid. Currently, there are about 5,400 students who are eligible for one of these awards, and there is approximately $117 million remaining in scholarship funds, which are set to be distributed through 2030.
The PGA Tour will never be the same now that Tiger Woods has announced his “indefinite break” from pro golf. “Saturday Night Live” even had its own spin on what Woods’ absence will mean for the golf organization:
But in the face of scandal, there’s always something positive: Tiger Woods’ hiatus means that there’s room for a new up-and-comer to take the golf world by storm. Sure, someone else in the PGA can step into his spot, but it would be really exciting to see a college golfer climb the ranks to greatness.
Men
Peter Uihlein, Oklahoma State University
Bud Cauley, University of Alabama
Russell Henley, University of Georgia
Diego Velasquez, Oregon State University
Hunter Hamrick, University of Alabama
Women
Jennifer Song, USC
Cydney Clanton, Auburn University
Maude Aimee Leblanc, Purdue University
Marina Alex, Vanderbilt University
Sydnee Michaels, UCLA
Notice a trend? Except for Maude Aimee Leblanc, who will have to brave the Indiana winter to hit the links, all of these golfers attend colleges in California or the South. Is a warm climate necessary to become the next big thing in golf? It certainly seems to help.
If you’ve got the goods when it comes to golf, start your search for golf scholarships and be sure to let your golf coach or instructor know that you are interested in playing golf on the college level–they can help point you in the right direction for recruitment. After all, someone needs to remove the black cloud that is hovering over professional golf right now—why not you?
Find out more about the popular Twitter chat, #CollegeBound, which can connect you with college respresentatives and others who have the same goals, struggles, and questions you have. Every Monday at 4 p.m. EST on Twitter. Get detailed info here.
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Follow our smart and savvy CBN bloggers as they guide you through every step of your quest to find the right college. Whether it’s figuring out that FAFSA, making sense of the SAT, or simply dishing gossip about celebrity smarty pants, they’ve got you covered. But be warned—these bloggers are fully caffeinated and know how to use their social media powers for both good and evil! So, whaddya’ say — do they get an A+?
Yes, the same network that made the phrase “It’s T-Shirt Time” famous, brings you a unique Facebook application called My College Dollars. The app scours the web for scholarships opportunities based on the information in your Facebook profile — genius! Using the app also qualifies you for a chance to win tickets to the VMAs and cash prizes.
