What would you do if you won the lottery? This is an essay prompt for the Alan Campos Dream Big Scholarship offered to students at California State University Northridge.
When I realized I could potentially attend a private university, I knew that I most likely could not afford tuition. I spent my entire senior year filling one scholarship application after the other, and ended up not turning any of them in.
Three years after, I began working for the Student Outreach and Recruitment department at CSUN. During my student assistant training, I listened to CSUN’s scholarship coordinator Veronica Popovic give a presentation regarding scholarships offered by the Financial Aid and Scholarship Department. She stated that our campus offers a myriad of scholarship opportunities. However, the pool of applicants is always small.
According to Popovic, in the 2015–2016 academic year, the scholarship department received over 6,500 applications. In the academic year of 2016–2017, the scholarship department received 3,700 applications. California State University Northridge has an enrollment of about 40 thousand students. When comparing the number of applicants to the number of enrolled students, the numbers of applications received is extremely low. There are many donors that are willing to award students with free money. So, what is stopping students from applying to scholarships, and what could be done to get more students to apply?
Popovic believes that the hesitation begins due to the misconceptions about scholarships.
“Students may think it’s too time consuming to apply for scholarships, and they may feel intimidated about the scholarship application process.”
Students believe scholarships require a high grade point average to be eligible to apply and that students feel they are wasting their time applying for something that is not guaranteed, unlike federal grants or loans.
Scholarships are considered “gift aid” and can come from the federal government, state government, your college, or a private or nonprofit organization. Unlike loans, they do not need to be paid back. There are merit based scholarships that are for students who have a qualifying GPA. They are also for students who are involved on campus, such as in leadership activities or in clubs and organizations. Need-based scholarships are for students with high financial need as determined by the FAFSA or the California Dream Act.
The scholarship department offers a variety of resources for students. Staff members present the different scholarship opportunities available to freshmen in their University 100 classes. The department also holds workshops, tables at orientation fairs, posts scholarships on social media, and encourages students to come into their office.
But these tactics are still not bringing more applications in.
For example, the Jonathan David Schwide scholarship is open specifically to students who advocate for the LGBTQ community. After contacting CSUN’s Pride Center, academic advisors, making posters, distributing fliers at campus fairs and announcing this on Facebook, Popovic stated that the scholarship department only received five applicants.
But what resources are available to students who are not attending universities?
Esteffi Marquez, who previously worked as a scholarship assistant at CSUN, also worked as a scholarship supervisor at the non-profit Los Angeles Conservation Corps. At the non-profit, Marquez worked with students who had dropped out of the Los Angeles Unified School District around North East Los Angeles and were trying to get a second chance at a high school diploma. Many of these students from these areas used to be in gangs or were incarcerated.
According to Census Reporter, 26% of persons in the East Los Angeles area live below the poverty line and only 6.4% of persons have received a bachelor’s degree or higher. The median household income in this area is around 38 thousand dollars.
The base tuition for a full time CSUN student is 3,291 dollars. This does not include housing fees. If a student from East LA were to attend CSUN for 8 semesters, they would be paying around the same amount of the median household income in East LA. With that being said, scholarships would be extremely helpful for students from this area to help them pay for tuition, housing, and books.
“They needed a lot of guidance,” Marquez said. “They didn’t know how to apply for a scholarship at all, they didn’t know how they worked. So I had to do a lot more hands on work to get them to even know what a scholarship was.”
Marquez believes that students at the non-profit were discouraged from applying scholarships for the same reasons Popovic stated.
“As soon as they heard “essay” they immediately were turned off by that fact.” Marquez said.
So what could be done to get more students to apply for scholarships? After speaking with Popovic and Marquez, I found that only a handful of students are proactive in looking for them. College students at CSUN and students looking for a second chance to receive education both have the same misconceptions about scholarships, which could be a sign of larger problem of college and career counseling during high school.
We could lead a horse to water but we cannot make them drink. There is a wide range of scholarship resources available to students inside and outside of schools, but they aren’t applying to them. I believe that education about the process and different types of scholarships earlier on in a students high school career would be the most important step schools should take in preparing their students for the cost of college.
“If they start earlier, students should know the process and how to research them that way they already know senior year or during college how to apply.” Marquez said.
Bringing awareness early will set a foundation for students. This could include showing students how to research scholarship opportunities, allowing them to practice and build on their personal statements, and even teaching them how to fill out the FAFSA application.
In the grand scheme of things, some students will still complain about high costs of tuition, but will not apply for scholarships. But applying for them is extremely important because there are so many donors out there who are willing to help students. The first step we can take in having more students apply for scholarships is to educate. So, what would you do if you won the lottery?