Financial Aid Leveraging – Bad News for the Less-than-Wealthy
The way I see it, the main job of financial aid officers should be to help the newly accepted and current students find a way to afford to go to their colleges or universities. In some universities and colleges, this is the way it is. However, there are some colleges that actually plan that some students will not receive financial aid packages that will allow them to enroll. This is called financial aid leveraging, and it maximizes the amount of money paid by students, while balancing that with the goal of meeting enrollment goals. Because of this, richer students, who can afford to pay their Cost of Attendance (COA) will get more spots at the college than they would if ability to pay didn’t play a role in who would enroll. Facts of life, folks.
Why Colleges Leverage Financial Aid
With colleges losing big chunks of their endowments when the stock market tanked, they’ve got to make it up somewhere. Some cut costs; some raise tuition and fees. (The Board of Regents of The University of California system just raised the undergraduate tuition 32 percent over the next two years.) Others cut costs and raise tuition, and some leverage financial aid. There are even companies that help colleges and universities figure out how to do this so they will get the tuition income they want. It’s a rough world out there.
Christian College Parents to the Rescue
This is why you need to get reliable information when facing the daunting task of selecting the right college, applying to colleges, and finding financial aid for college. A woman I met in, of all places, a mammogram waiting room, told me that someone had asked her for $900 to find scholarships for her child. Totally unnecessary!
More Information on Financial Aid
There are lots of places to find reliable information on financial aid without paying someone $900. Christian College Parents is one of them. You can also find a wonderful FREE scholarship search at FastWeb
Blessings,
Bonnie
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
The Truth about the "Bill Gates Scholarship"
Don’t Believe Everything You Read on the Internet
There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Case in point – I was recently looking for information about college financial aid and found one on a “scholarship” website. Not only was it poorly written, it was also wrong. It was about the “Bill Gates Scholarship.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does fund a scholarship program called The Gates Millennium Scholars. The article got at least that part right. However, the article said that the scholarship was available to anyone who was a permanent resident of the United States.
Actually what the article says is “The students from different ethnic groups like Native American, African American, Hispanics and Asian and Pacific Islanders are privileged under this scholarship. …. The Nationality also will not be a barrier for availing scholarships from the establishment. If you are a permanent resident of US, you are adequate for the scholarship.”
Huh?
Was it written by a software program or someone who doesn’t speak English? Either way they got the facts wrong, because The Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program is ONLY for African Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, and Hispanic Americans.
Want More Info on the GMS Program?
For those of you who might be interested in this scholarship, there are other requirements for the scholarship, including a cumulative GPA of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale (unweighted), and meeting the Federal Pell Grant eligibility criteria (which is for lower income families). The recipients also have to be nominated by an educator and recommended by someone familiar with the student’s leadership and community service.
There is no mention of the two additional applications (by the nominator and the recommender) in the article I found. It does however say that the scholarship “will cover the major portion of the coaching fee.” I have no idea what that is supposed to mean because on the official website of the GMS there is NO mention of any “coaching fee.” Maybe he’s talking about the tuition? He also gives a specific dollar amount for the scholarship, but, in reality, it varies depending on a number of factors. Again I wonder who or what really wrote the article.
The deadline for the GMS program is January 11, 2010 (11:59 p.m. EST), so there is still time to apply. However, before you do anything else, you should go to the GMS website, which you can find here. That way you can get the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this scholarship. You should do this with any scholarship for which you plan to apply.
What about the Nominators and Recommenders?
The educators who qualify as Nominators are principals, teachers, guidance counselors, higher education representatives, and other professional educators. They are invited to nominate students with outstanding academic qualifications, particularly those likely to succeed in the fields of computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health, or science. There are no limits on how many students a Nominator can nominate, so if your student meets all the qualifications, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask an educator to nominate him or her. It may be that an educator who knows your child would be delighted to nominate her or him, but doesn’t know about this particular program.
As far as the Recommender goes, the GMS website even suggests that you “choose your Recommender carefully.” It can even be the Nominator if that person is also familiar with the student’s non-academic activities.
Speaking of Financial Aid…
The Financial Aid ebooks are almost ready. You’ll be the first to know when they are available!
Blessings,
Bonnie
There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Case in point – I was recently looking for information about college financial aid and found one on a “scholarship” website. Not only was it poorly written, it was also wrong. It was about the “Bill Gates Scholarship.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does fund a scholarship program called The Gates Millennium Scholars. The article got at least that part right. However, the article said that the scholarship was available to anyone who was a permanent resident of the United States.
Actually what the article says is “The students from different ethnic groups like Native American, African American, Hispanics and Asian and Pacific Islanders are privileged under this scholarship. …. The Nationality also will not be a barrier for availing scholarships from the establishment. If you are a permanent resident of US, you are adequate for the scholarship.”
Huh?
Was it written by a software program or someone who doesn’t speak English? Either way they got the facts wrong, because The Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program is ONLY for African Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, and Hispanic Americans.
Want More Info on the GMS Program?
For those of you who might be interested in this scholarship, there are other requirements for the scholarship, including a cumulative GPA of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale (unweighted), and meeting the Federal Pell Grant eligibility criteria (which is for lower income families). The recipients also have to be nominated by an educator and recommended by someone familiar with the student’s leadership and community service.
There is no mention of the two additional applications (by the nominator and the recommender) in the article I found. It does however say that the scholarship “will cover the major portion of the coaching fee.” I have no idea what that is supposed to mean because on the official website of the GMS there is NO mention of any “coaching fee.” Maybe he’s talking about the tuition? He also gives a specific dollar amount for the scholarship, but, in reality, it varies depending on a number of factors. Again I wonder who or what really wrote the article.
The deadline for the GMS program is January 11, 2010 (11:59 p.m. EST), so there is still time to apply. However, before you do anything else, you should go to the GMS website, which you can find here. That way you can get the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this scholarship. You should do this with any scholarship for which you plan to apply.
What about the Nominators and Recommenders?
The educators who qualify as Nominators are principals, teachers, guidance counselors, higher education representatives, and other professional educators. They are invited to nominate students with outstanding academic qualifications, particularly those likely to succeed in the fields of computer science, education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health, or science. There are no limits on how many students a Nominator can nominate, so if your student meets all the qualifications, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask an educator to nominate him or her. It may be that an educator who knows your child would be delighted to nominate her or him, but doesn’t know about this particular program.
As far as the Recommender goes, the GMS website even suggests that you “choose your Recommender carefully.” It can even be the Nominator if that person is also familiar with the student’s non-academic activities.
Speaking of Financial Aid…
The Financial Aid ebooks are almost ready. You’ll be the first to know when they are available!
Blessings,
Bonnie
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