Searching for Scholarships: 3 Tips for First-Generation Students with Jen Schoen

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Discover three secrets to finding scholarships tailored for first-generation students that are ready for our students to use. Join me, Jen Schoen, as I share tools like College Greenlight and Scholarship Owl to discover opportunities that fit student's background and aspirations. We'll talk about asking for help from teachers, advisors, and counselors, and finding the treasure troves on rival high schools' websites.

This episode is not just about resources; it's an open invitation to connect and collaborate. I'm eager to hear from listeners who are working on impactful initiatives or support programs for first-generation college students. Share your stories and successes with me at [e-mail], and let's continue to build a community that uplifts and empowers our students. Together, we'll break down barriers and help every first-gen student achieve their college dreams.

Other websites for scholarships I mentioned:
Fastweb.com
Scholarship Junkies

Please help others find this podcast by rating and reviewing wherever you listen!

You can find me at https://www.firstgenfm.com/ and on LinkedIn. My email is [e-mail].

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome and welcome back to the First Gen FM podcast
, where we high school andcollege educators strengthen,
celebrate and supportfirst-generation college and
college-bound students.
I'm Jennifer Schoen, your host.
Please call me Jen.
I'd love it if you could leavea review and a rating for this
podcast to help other educatorsfind us.
Thank you so much for takingthe time to do that.

(00:27):
Now let's dive into this week'sepisode.
Today is a solo episode where Iwant to spend a little bit of
time talking about scholarshipsand I hope that these three
scholarship tips and maybe twothings to avoid, will help you
help your students, whetherthey're in high school or
they're in college.
So one of my first tips is todefinitely use the big search

(00:53):
engines to start, I think placeslike College Greenlight and
Scholarship Owl are reallyhelpful for students to see the
types and the broad array ofscholarships that are available
to them.
I like ScholarshipOwl andFastWeb because you can put in
all the information and then thesearch engine works and it will

(01:14):
tell the students, it willemail them different options for
them to apply to.
I also really like CollegeGreenlight.
As someone who works in thefirst-gen space at college, I
think that College Greenlightprovides a variety of
opportunities for students tolook for scholarships.

(01:34):
If you just go to theirscholarship page and I will go
ahead and put a link to that inthe show notes for all of these
things that I'm talking aboutFor College Greenlight you can
search.
High school juniors can searchas well as seniors.
I know that sometimes we think,oh, you have to be a senior to
search, but they have anopportunity for juniors to
search.
They have opportunities forcollege freshmen and sophomores.

(02:00):
So it's not that if you don'tget a scholarship before you get
in college, you can never getone.
No, there are manyopportunities to do that.
So college freshmen andsophomores can search on College
Greenlight as well.
And then they also haveopportunities for students
looking for master's degrees,and you don't hear about that a
lot.
So I want to make sure Imention that, especially for
those of us who work withstudents who are currently in

(02:20):
college and are looking tocontinue their education past
their baccalaureate degree.
So I just thought that wasreally fantastic.
College Greenlight also allowsyou to search based on
demographics.
So if you're a woman, if you'reAfrican American and or
Hispanic or LGBTQIA+, you canlook at specific scholarships

(02:44):
for you if you fit thatdemographic.
And, of course, my favorite,there's also scholarships just
for first-generation collegestudents another reason to like
College Greenlight.
I've been working with CollegeGreenlight through my
institution for a while andusing their database to get the
word out about the scholarshipthat we have at Northeastern

(03:06):
called the TORCH Scholarship.
That is for first-generationstudents who are Pell eligible
and that means they have to beeligible for federal financial
aid and typically that's UScitizen, permanent resident,
sometimes also refugee or asyleestatus.
So if that's something thatyou're listening, you're like

(03:27):
ooh, northeastern scholarshipfor first-gen students.
Check it out attorchnortheasternedu.
So that's my little commercial.
But back to College Greenlight.
The ability to search based onwhat year you are in school, in
college or heading to yourmaster's degree, as well as
demographic, I think opens up areally wide variety for students

(03:49):
to see that there are optionsout there, and if they take the
time and start looking, theywere going to find things that
work for them, and so we justneed to get these resources out
to them so that they're aware ofthem and they can start looking
.
My second tip students need tobe able to ask for help, and by

(04:10):
asking and telling other peoplethat they are looking for
scholarships.
That is networking.
It's the very beginning ofnetworking and allows our
students to really find thepeople that may connect them to
the resources that you can'tfind online or to the
opportunities to getscholarships that they can find
online.
I tell students, if you happento be going to an ATM which now

(04:33):
maybe with Venmo, these thingsare out of date but if they
happen to be going to an ATM andthere's a bank attached because
that's not always the caseeither right, if there's a bank
attached, to go on in and ask ifthey have scholarships for
students going to college or forstudents in college, depending
on where they're at.
They can also, of course, tellall their teachers that they're

(04:54):
looking for scholarships becausethey might know somebody, tell
any organizations they're partof and ask their advisors, their
community organizations, ifthey offer scholarships because
there is money out there, ifthey're willing to put
themselves out there and sharethat.
They either need funding orwould like to have funding to go
to college.

(05:14):
I heard this great tip from Samwho founded Scholarship Junkies,
and what he said helped him getscholarships was he obviously
sat down in his guidance officeat his high school and went
through all of the informationthey had and applied to
scholarships through them andlooked on his high school's
website to find out what else hecould find and apply to many,

(05:38):
many scholarships.
But the thing that I thoughtwas brilliant was that he also
went online at all the rivalhigh schools that were around
him and he looked at thescholarships that they had
listed, because sometimes theones that are at your high
school especially maybe if it'san under-resourced high school
may not be as robust as if it'sa more affluent high school.

(06:02):
And so he says his tip was togo to these other high schools
that are around you, to yourrival high schools, and steal
all their scholarships, which iskind of what he did.
He actually got a fewscholarships that he found on
other high schools' websites, soI just thought that was a
brilliant tip and I wanted topass that along.
Now I think my third tip is isthat certainly artificial

(06:27):
intelligence, ai, chat, gpt,depending on what you use can be
helpful in finding scholarshipstoo, and I would say to
students to give that a try, orto you to give that a try if you
want to, but chat GPT isn'talways correct and so some
vetting has to take place andthey're going to have to go to
the website anyway to find thereal information on the

(06:50):
scholarships.
So those two big scholarshipsearch engines I mentioned,
along with FastWeb and askingfor help, are my top two tips
before we send students off touse AI to find what they need.
So here's my three and a halftips, because it's a little
bonus.

(07:10):
This last tip is specificallyfor students who are in college,
although I think high schoolstudents can ask a question
about this too.
But let me backtrack a littlebit.
If you're working with studentsin college and you either have
a relationship with financialaid or you'd like your students
to reach out to financial aid,they can ask financial aid if
there are any opportunities toget endowed scholarships,

(07:34):
depending on the size of thecollege, how long it's been
around.
Sometimes there are veryspecific scholarships for
students who fit certaincriteria and they may not know
about that unless there is anendowed scholarship application.
That might be on theirfinancial aid website at the
college or if they go tofinancial aid and they
specifically ask for that.

(07:56):
For high school students who aremaybe talking to admissions
counselors and asking aboutscholarships again more of that,
asking for help that second tipI said, talk to the admissions
counselors and ask them A whatscholarships they may have for
incoming students, whetherthey're first-year students or
transfer students, but also ask,once I get here, are there any

(08:16):
endowed scholarships?
Are there any otherscholarships I can earn based on
my major or based on myinterests or based on my career
track?
And they may be surprised tofind out yes, there's some
scholarships you cannot even getwhen you first enter,
especially as a first year, butas you go into your major and
through your major, you'll findother opportunities to earn

(08:37):
scholarships.
So those are the three tips Iwanted to share To use the big
search engines, especiallyCollege Greenlight, if you're a
first-generation student, to askfor help, to reach out to
others and tell them that youare looking for scholarships.
And, finally, to talk aboutendowed scholarship and, whether
you're a high school student,talking to the admissions

(08:59):
counselor and asking aboutopportunities once they get to
that particular college.
Or asking their financial aidoffice or you as their advisor,
what you know about scholarshipsat the college for students who
are second, third and fourthyears, or maybe even fifth years
, to ask about those as well.
And again, what we want to dois open up opportunities for our

(09:21):
students to find scholarshipsand give them a chance to help
fund their education so they'renot leaving with a lot of debt.
Now I did promise two things toavoid, and they're going to be
really quick and simple.
The first one is I always warnstudents about paying for
college searches.
There are so many freeopportunities out there.

(09:44):
I mentioned FastWeb,scholarshipowl, college
Greenlight, scholarship Junkieslots of opportunities out there
that are free.
So if they pay, it should notbe for a scholarship search.
Maybe it's for helping themwrite the perfect essay, but
still, there's a lot of help outthere if they want to find it
for free, and we know a lot ofour students do.

(10:07):
My second scholarships to avoidare the sweepstakes scholarships
, and I think that's importantbecause a lot of them are scams.
There's really no moneyinvolved at the end or it's such
a minimal amount that itdoesn't really make sense for
students to put their time andeffort into filling out those
sweepstakes cards, and a lot oftimes they will be email

(10:29):
collection systems and then fromthere they will sell the emails
and it will be a spam-a-paloozafor our students.
So I'd like to ask them to keepclear of that.
So paying for college searchesand sweepstakes, I think are not
the best use of their time ortheir money.
I hope you found these tips andthings to avoid helpful and that

(10:52):
you will share them with yourstudents and help them find
opportunities to get more moneyto help pay for college again,
whether they're in high schoolor in college.
As always, you can find me atfirstgenfmcom or you can always
email me at jen, that's J-E-N atfirstgenfmcom.

(11:13):
I would love to hear from you,especially if you have things
that you want to share programsthat you're doing in your high
school for first-generationcollege-bound students or that
you're doing in college that isserving your first-gen college
students.
I hope you have a great weekand I'll talk to you again next
week.
Thank you.