Shawn Morrissey: [00:00:00] Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Um, tonight we’ll be talking about applying for private college scholarships. My name is Sean Morrissey. I am the director of college relations at MEFA, and we also have Jennifer Benton Bento opinion. Um, she’ll be answering questions for you behind the scenes. Um, and so thank you for joining us.

So a little bit about myself. Um, I joined MEFA about little over three years ago, but I have 30 years of experience in financial aid. Um, I’ve worked at several colleges in Massachusetts, um, and so hopefully some of that information will be helpful to you. I see that a couple of people have raised their hands.

Um, the raised the hand function. It’s not how we’ll be using for questions today. If you have questions, please enter those in the q and a portion. Jennifer will [00:01:00] be answering those behind the scenes as well as interrupting and, um, asking questions as needed so that we can, uh, answer some of those live.

The chat feature is also disabled for tonight. Um, if you need. Live transcripts, you can use the live transcript button at the bottom of the screen to get closed captioning. Um, we are recording this webinar and we will send copies of the recording and the slides to everyone within a couple of days, um, after that recording.

So a little bit about me. Is a state authority that was created in 1982 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A group of colleges in Massachusetts actually petitioned the state legislature in Massachusetts to create an entity to provide low cost loans to Massachusetts students. Since then, we’ve expanded, um, beyond just providing low cost loans to Massachusetts students.

We provide [00:02:00] that, um, across the country as well as. Help families. Um, plan, save, and pay for college with things like free advice like this webinar this evening. We also have savings plans. Um, the you plan and, um, the you fund. We also have other, um, services that we offer for Massachusetts students as well.

Um, such as MEFA Pathway, which I’ll be talking a little bit about later in this presentation. So what we’re going to talk about this evening are what are scholarships, where to look for scholarships, some different online search engines, tips for finding scholarships, and how that all works with financial aid in general.

So first of all, what are scholarships? Scholarships are, um, free funds [00:03:00] that help students pay for colleges. Um, and there are different types of scholarships that are given out.

And they can be given in recognition of attributes that the student has, such as good grades, community service, leadership, um, involvement in sports could be, um. Just ’cause a student has some kind of interest that is in common with who the donor wants to give some money to. They can be provided by community organizations, foundation, nonprofits, corporations, um, they can be given out by all different types of entities.

And we’ll be talking about. Where you can look for all these different scholarships because there are different ways that you can, um, connect with scholarship organizations that giving them out. And the great thing about scholarships is this is money that you don’t need to pay back. It can do make a significant impact in [00:04:00] helping college costs.

Um. A lot of scholarships are not need based, so they have nothing to do with filling out the FAFSA or, um, prov showing that you have financial need. Some of them may have some need component to them, but a lot of scholarships usually have to do with attributes for the student, or, um, sometimes what the student may be studying may have different types of scholarships.

So we’ll talk about all different ways that students can find scholarships.

So, uh, the typical high school senior usually matches with five 50 to a hundred different scholarships in a search engine. So we’ll be talking about different search engines that students can go to, to create a profile, um, give some information about themselves, and then usually what those search engines do is then.

Look at all these student attributes and match that student with different scholarships [00:05:00] based on their attributes. And most students meet with between 50 and in dif a hundred different scholarships that they can apply for. Also, each year they’re around a hundred million dollars in scholar unclaimed scholarships.

In the us, often because there aren’t enough qualified applicants

and some of the scholarships. May go unfunded because they are for very unique circumstances for students. So I always like to, um, tell students that if you have any unique interests, unique hobbies, if you’ve done some volunteering in some unique areas, please highlight that when you are looking for scholarships because you never know what, um, you may find a scholarship for.

It may be something that’s very, um, disconnected from academics or what you would think. Would have a scholarship for going to college. Excuse me, if someone has a hobby. Um, playing [00:06:00] with a yo-yo or something like that. There may be a yo-yo club that has a scholarship out there. Um, things that are very strange, like that may have scholarships that you would never think will have college scholarships for.

So please, when you are filling out these profiles, we’ll talk a little bit more about that. Please put all those unique interests that a student may have.

So how to get started? Um, here’s some questions that you wanna ask of your student or of yourself if you’re the one looking for the scholarship searches, um, to try to narrow down some different scholarships that, um, you may qualify for. What areas of study after high school interests you? You wanna look at what you wanna major in, what, um, your career may be after, um, college.

So you wanna [00:07:00] look long-term as well. So if a student is going into their undergraduate studies, um, think about what they may want to do. If they’re going beyond undergraduate to graduate and if they’re going on to medical school, things like that, there may be scholarships for students that are going into their undergrad years that are meant for students that are interested in going on to other careers that would need other studies.

So just think long-term sometimes for these scholarships. Because they are always just for the immediate needs that the student has. Um, has a student done any volunteering? If they’ve done volunteering, where do they volunteer? Um, think of the various cultural backgrounds and your family heritage. Um. If you’re involved in any community based organizations, um, religious organizations, they may have scholarships available to you.

Do you have any special talents? Are you, um, involved in sports in [00:08:00] any type of music? Um, do you play any instruments? If you play any instruments, please list all of them that you play. There may be. A scholarship that’s available for trumpet players. It’s not available for saxophone players, so you wanna just make sure that you list all of those interests for yourself.

Does anyone in your family live with a disability or health challenge? You wanna take a look?

There may be scholarships available for, um, certain disabilities or health challenges out there as well for not just the student, but for anyone in their family that may be experiencing that. Have any of your parents or grandparents served in the military? There’s often scholarships for people with military service.

You also wanna look at where your parents work, where the student works. Oftentimes, um, employers may have scholarships available for [00:09:00] the students of their workers or for their workers themselves. So you wanna take a look at that as well.

So where to look for scholarships. I apologize. I’m just getting over a cold and so I apologize that I’m coughing so much. Um, one of the best places to look for scholarships is the high school guidance office. Um, that’s going to have a great repository of scholarships that are available locally to the student.

Often those are scholarships that a student may have the best chance of getting because they’re, um, competing against a smaller pool of students usually for these local scholarships. So you wanna take a look at what those local scholarships are, um, and see if any of those are ones that the student may qualify for.

Those scholarships may be [00:10:00] available on the, in the guidance office, on a board. Some of them may have them on their portals as well. Um, if the school uses MEFA Pathway as their portal, they could have them listed on there. If they use Naviance, they would be listed on that as well. So please have the student check.

Their online portal through their high school and find out what scholarships may be available locally for them.

Again, you wanna check, um, with the parents’ place of employment to see if they have any private scholarships available for the children of the employees. There are a lot of places that do have dedicated scholarships for employees. Also, if the student has a job, even a part-time job, sometimes they may offer scholarship opportunities for, um, staff members that are headed to college.

So you wanna check for the availability of those as well. [00:11:00] If, um, the student is going on to a career in certain professional areas, you wanna check for those professional associations. For example, if a student is going on to get an accounting degree, you wanna look at accounting associations to see if they have any scholarships available for the students, um, that may be available.

Um, for science students going into the areas of science often have scholarships that are dedicated to, to people pursuing a degree in science. So you wanna look at that as well. You also can look at local organizations who have their own websites. Um, like the Elks, the Rotary Club, PT organizations. You could check your local library.

Sometimes they have a repository of scholarships available locally. Um. And again, please, your guidance office is a really great [00:12:00] place to look for local scholarships. Uh, I know myself, I was really lucky that when I graduated from high school there were some local scholarships in my area and I was able to benefit from those.

And without those local scholarships, I would not have been able to attend college. They really made the difference in, um, being able to attend college.

Um, MEFA.org has a great resource center that we publish lists of scholarships that are available. Um, we have scholarships for STEM students, which is science and math students. Um, scholarships for students with disabilities, scholarships for, for students that are already in college. If you’re studying abroad, there may be scholarships available for that as well.

So we have a lot of different repositories of scholarships. You can check MEFA.org/resource center for all different types of [00:13:00] scholarships that may be available for there. There are scholarships for artists you can check with, um, all the different areas that there may be scholarships for. If you select the scholarships category and article [email protected], you’ll also see different articles on there.

We tend to write articles about scholarships as they become due. Um, scholarships will have deadlines throughout the year, um, so they’re not always in conjunction with the financial aid deadlines that students may have at their school, but there may be different deadlines as well, so you can check. Um, periodically for different scholarships that may become available at different times.

There are, um, online search engines as well. There’s several reputable websites that provide scholarships and search tools on, on these search engines. You can filter by specific criteria. [00:14:00] So again, you would put information about the student, their interest, what they wanna study, what volunteering they may do, um, any special attributes that they have, um, you want to put in there.

Often you can create an account at these different search tools. It’s best to do that because then you can go back once you’ve created an account and it will usually provide you with a list of scholarships that you match with. And you can go back and, um, look at that list as you go through the process says

so, um, leave a pathway. Is one of the services that MEFA offers, which is a free service, and any student can create an account through MEFA Pathway. You go to MEFA pathway.org to set up your account. You can log into that. If a student already has an existing [00:15:00] account, um, so Massachusetts High Schools used me for Pathway as their portal.

If they already have an account, they can just log in with their existing account. If they don’t have an account through their high school, they can set up a free account on their own. Um, and they can do a scholarship search in there. Um, you want to check your state of residence, your area of study, ethnicity, type of school in religion, and it’s going to give you, uh.

Personalized list of the scholarships that you match with and you wanna take a look at what the different deadlines are there, track the scholarship status and the amount all of that will show for you. Um, within mefa Pathway, and there’s both national and local scholarships in the database for Mefa Pathway, right now there’s over 5,000 national scholarships available, um, through.

A pathway you can access information about those scholarships. [00:16:00] Um, there’s also a national website called Fastweb. If you go to fastweb.com there, you can, um, set up an account again. Um. They’re a very robust search website. They have a huge list of scholarships. They’ve been around for 25 years. They have a good amount of scholarships.

They have 1.5 million college scholarships listed on there. And so again, the student would list their location, their major, um, their different areas of interest, the college that they’re studying at, the different academics. They may be interested in the different extracurricular activities. If they’ve done any type of, um, community service, I wanna list that there as well.

Any hobbies, interests, anything that you can think of? Again, please list there for the students to see if they can match them with the scholarship. Um. The nice thing about Fastweb is they do vet [00:17:00] all of their scholarships. So 1.5 million scholarships may seem overwhelming, but they are all real scholarships.

They are vetted by a real person. Um, and it’s a free membership that you can get on fastweb.com. That gives you a list of the qualifications and what the instructions are to apply for each of the scholarships. Now, whenever you are on the internet.

I caution you to limit the information that you’re giving out about, um, your personal identity. You don’t want to give out things like your social security number, um, date of birth on, on a website. Um, unless you know that that is a really legitimate ask of the scholarship. But you don’t want to put any of that information when you are, um, just doing a scholarship search out there.

bold.org is another, um, source that you can search for [00:18:00] scholarships and you want to create a profile there that showcases your ability. And there are some exclusive bold.org scholarships that can only be found on bold.org. So that’s another, um, search engine that you can go through similar to Fastweb.

But they do have some scholarships that are unique only to bull.org. Big Future is another scholarship search engine. This one is owned by the college board, the college board’s, the same company that does the SAT, the CSS profile, that this is their scholarship search engine. And again, it’s going to search for and give you a personalized list of scholarships based on the information that you put in there about your background and your future plans.

Um. They do have an autofill function available, which can save you time filling out applications. ’cause a lot of the, the applications for [00:19:00] scholarships are going to ask very similar information from scholarship to scholarship. So, um, with that autofill feature, it can help you apply for several scholarships by just entering that information once and auto filling that on the other scholarship applications.

Raise me, um, is a little bit different than the other scholarship. Search engines, but it does give you, um, scholarship money that range anywhere from 25 to $2,000. Um, the accounts are free, but only certain, these scholarships only available at certain colleges. So right now there are over 200 that participate.

If you go on to raised.me, you can see what those colleges are. If your student is planning to go to one of those, you can take a look at that and see. Um. If they do qualify for any of that. And what, how this one works is you get scholarship credits and receive the money [00:20:00] from a college. Once you apply to the college, um, receive acceptance and attend.

So it’s things like getting a’s in certain classes, taking AP classes, um, doing certain tasks like babysitting a younger sibling. Um, they give you credits for that and that turns into scholarship money.

Uh, tips on finding scholarships. So, um, I’m just gonna take a quick, um, break before going on to the next session and I’ll be back in. What, just one second.[00:21:00]

I apologize for that. So tips on finding a scholarship. You wanna start searching early? Um, there are scholarships that are open to Children’s Young as five years old, so you don’t have to. Wait until senior year of high school to start looking. So if you are in your senior year, there are plenty of scholarships that are available, um, for students that are in their senior year or even are already in college.

So that’s, that’s fine as well. But if your student is younger than that, you can start, um, searching for scholarships as early as, as you’d like for that. ’cause there are scholarships available, um, very early for students as well. And we have an article here with a link for scholarships for elementary and middle school students.

Um, and there are scholarships that are available sometimes much earlier than than you may think. [00:22:00] Um, so you can start getting scholarships put aside for students very early so that when they get to the age where they need them, they’ll already have that funding.

You wanna stay organized. Um, as you look for scholarships, you wanna keep a running list of deadlines. Like I said, their deadlines may be very different from scholarship to scholarship. So you wanted to keep a list of what those deadlines are, what the scholarship amounts are, what the requirements towards those scholarships are.

Um, it’s always best to try to apply for the scholarships that have. The biggest amounts, um, that the student seems to be really aligned with. So if they meet several of the criteria for the scholarship and you read the description for the scholarship and you say, that sounds exactly like me, that would be ones that you should put towards the top of the list of you want to use.

Um. Your [00:23:00] time and resources on the scholarships you think you might be most likely to, to receive. Um, then you wanna create a spreadsheet that you can easily rep reference that can include things like the scholarship, website, information, the deadline, the amount of the scholarship. The amount that you’ve been awarded, you can keep a column for that because you can see how much, um, you have received as you receive information that you’ve received, the scholarship and what’s required to apply for those scholarships.

Um, you are more likely to earn a scholarship if you submit an application for several. Um. So it’s best to just try to apply for as many as you have time for that you seem like would, you would meet the qualifications for. So try to set a goal to apply for a certain number of scholarships every week. I always like to say that, you know, if a [00:24:00] student has a part-time job, um, it’s very unlikely that it, in an hour’s worth of work, they can make several thousand dollars.

But in an hour’s worth of work, you can usually apply for several scholarships. Um, and you may receive one that’s worth several thousand dollars. So you wanna look at it that way as an investment, um, towards your future that the amount of time that you spend filling up these scholarship applications.

While it may seem, um, tedious in a lot of work, sometimes, um, it can really reap some benefits for you if you do receive some scholarship money. There are many scholarships that we require an essay. In order for the student to, um, apply for that. A lot of students shy away from the ones that require an essay because either they just don’t like writing essays, they’re sick of writing essays ’cause they have to do it all the time in high school.

But, um, because not as many students are applying applying for that because they required [00:25:00] SA students have a better chance of re receiving the scholarship. That requires an essay because they’re, um, competing against less students ’cause less are applying for it. Also, a lot of these scholarships that required essay, um, the prompt that they have for that essay may be very similar from scholarship to scholarship.

So if the student writes one essay, they can recycle that essay and use it, um, for several scholarships. Or maybe they just need to tweak that essay just a little bit, um, in order to use that for several scholarships. So writing just one essay may give them the opportunity to apply for several scholarships that, um, require an essay, and they have a better chance of receiving one of those scholarships.

And also, um, look for scholarships through way of your favorite activities, not just things that you’ve done academically or achievements that you’ve had in high school, like sports, music, art, [00:26:00] things like that. You can even go beyond that to things that, um, you’ve, you’ve done in your lifetime. Um, interests that the student may have and search for scholarships to see if.

Um, there are any scholarships for those unique areas that a student may have interest in. Um, but you also wanna list any of your extracurricular activities that you have done, um, along with high school, like sports, music, art, all the clubs that the student may be in, um, list, they may have scholarships available for that.

Also, you wanna take a look at your. Student’s online profile. Um, make sure that they’re careful about what they put out there about themselves, because scholarship, um, when they’re reviewing an application, may take a look at what’s, what’s out there online, um, about a student. Make sure that presence is professional, mature, um, any [00:27:00] material that you might not want someone to see if you are going to, um, be employed or.

The admissions office at a high outta college, you wouldn’t want to see. Make sure all that information is cleaned up on the student’s profile so that when scholarship, um, committees are looking at that information, if they do look online, if the student, um, that information will be helpful to them rather than hurt them.

Also, you never wanna pay a fee for a scholarship search tool. Um, all the ones we talked about were free. Um, students may receive emails. As a parent, you may receive emails saying that if you join this scholarship, um, search for a certain fee that they’ll guarantee you a scholarship. Um. They usually don’t come through with guaranteeing a scholarship on that, and you should never pay a fee for a scholarship.

Scholarship companies are in the. [00:28:00] Business of trying to give money to students for, um, attending college. The ones that are asking for fees are trying to make money off students, so please avoid those, um, because the free, the free search tools will include the exact same scholarships as those that require payment.

Amen.

Also, avoid scams. Be cautious of applications that require detailed personal information such as a social security number, um, access to tax returns, things like that you want to avoid, um, giving out information like that to scholarship companies. Um, and you want to make sure that you, again, are not paying for scholarships.

There are some companies that claim to offer scholarships, but they’re just trying to. Get student information to use for marketing purposes. So again, [00:29:00] when you’re out on the internet, please just be, um, aware of what information you’re sharing and don’t share any information that you wouldn’t feel comfortable, um, sharing.

Let’s talk a little bit about how scholarships work in conjunction with other types of financial aid. Um, so the most. Students, we see the bulk of their college cost help from financial aid. So, and that is need-based financial aid. So while there are a lot of scholarship money out there, students should also fill out the FAFSA in other required financial aid applications through the college that they’re applying to in order to apply for financial aid.

So. Don’t just rely on just outside scholarships and private scholarships. You also wanna make sure that you’re applying for, um, financial aid through the college themselves. And that’s going to open up when you fill out the FAFSA and the [00:30:00] other applications that a college may require that’s gonna open your eligibility for federal, state, and college money.

Um, the private scholarships are, are usually on top of that. Once you do receive a private scholarship, you do have to alert the financial aid office for each college that you apply to, to let them know that they’ve, um, that you’ve received a private scholarship. If you are receiving knee based financial aid, um, your private scholarships have to fit in within the total amount of your financial aid eligibility.

So the way financial aid works is they take the total cost of education, um, subtract. From that, what the family’s, um, student aid Index is and determine what the need-based financial aid is. But, um. A family cannot receive more financial aid than the total cost of education. [00:31:00] So if you do receive need-based aid from a school or you’ve received, um, loan money offers through the federal government, those sometimes have to be reduced.

If you receive private scholarships the way that each school handles that will maybe different. So you wanna contact each school to see how they handle that, if they’re going to reduce loan money first. Reduce grant money first and how that’s going to affect your financial aid. So you wanna check with each of the colleges financial aid offices, um, in order to find out how they do handle their, the adjustment they may have to do if you receive a private scholar.

So we do have some information here [00:32:00] about connecting with MEFA. Um, you can scan this QR code. We also have links to all our social media, um, and. You should already be receiving our emails once since you are attending this webinar. And we will send a copy of the slides in this recording. And Jennifer, do we have any questions that you might need to cover?

Jennifer Bento: Yes, we have one question that came in that I thought the, um, the, the group would, would benefit from hearing the answer too. Um, if offered a scholarship, is it typical that the organization asks for banking information? So to have the funds directly deposited to the recipient.

Shawn Morrissey: That’s unusual that for them to ask for banking information, um, I would vet that they really need that.

A lot of scholarships actually go directly to the college that the student is attending rather than being sent directly [00:33:00] to the student. Um, but there are some that send it directly to the student as well. So I would, um, just make sure that the scholarship is legit before giving out any banking information.

Um. To transfer that because I haven’t heard of that in the past.

Jennifer Bento: No. And the, um, the question came in from someone that, um, received one from bold, bold, the bold, um, organization or for through that search engine.

Shawn Morrissey: Okay. So perhaps that’s the way that scholarship does that. I’m not saying it’s not legit, but I would just definitely.

Check and vet that scholarship to make sure it’s legit. Yep. Always check giving out any banking information.

Jennifer Bento: Yep. Okay. Thank you. That was all the, that’s all the for questions. Thank you.

Shawn Morrissey: Okay. Thank you everyone. We’ll be sending out copies of the slides in the next couple of days. Thank [00:34:00] you.