<p>Hi, I won the essay contest for the Black College expo scholarship. They said I have to attend the expo to receive the scholarship, and they wouldn't tell me how much scholarship money it was when I asked. (said it was a "surprise" which sounded a tad sketchy...). Since the expo lasts over 3 hours and I have to drive 2 hours to get there, I was trying to figure out how much money I will even receive to decide if it's worth it or not. Because I'm afraid it'll only be $50 or $100 or something ridiculously small like that...</p>
<p>So does anyone have previous experience with the black expo scholarship? How much money did you recieve? Thanks so much!</p>
I know this is an old thread, but anyone else have any experience with this?
From researching I gather that this expo really is a college recruiting exercise and the “scholarship” isn’t a generic scholarship for $X, but really it’s just saying that if you agree to go to one of the schools at the expo, that they will offer you a certain amount of scholarship money (and that it varies by school).
So if you’re looking for a few extra scholarship $$$ to pay for Harvard then this is not what you’re looking for. But if you are open to attending one of the sponsoring schools (I assume primarily or entirely HBCU’s?), then you can get accepted on the spot and be awarded some scholarship money.
Feel free to correct me if I’m off base, this is purely conjecture on my part.
As someone who has BEEN to an actual Black College Expo with my daughter, I can tell you what it is. There are some college-specific scholarships that are instantly awarded along with instant acceptances (you can bring you transcripts, -etc.). But there are also some event-specific scholarships. The event itself is a college fair, mostly HBCU’s, but also area colleges and some PWI’s (We saw Harvard there). In addition, there are talks and workshops-financial aid, life in college, etc. At the Oakland one we attended, we met several directors of admissions, who spent a good amount of time talking with us. The following year when we took our D on a college tour, one of the directors we met dropped everything to speak with us for an hour when we visited.
This is not a sketchy operation, these are the real deal people. If you live close to on Expo and are interested in an HBCU, I would encourage you to go. It could also be helpful if you can’t get back east to view schools or would like to attend a workshop. The OP is past needing advice on this topic, but for future readers, here you are.
Thanks for setting the record straight @sseamom. Can you provide any more details on the “event specific” scholarships (e.g. number, type, amount, etc)?
It’s been almost 2 years-if I recall correctly, they were smaller amounts, maybe $1,000 or less and there were quite a few of them-10 or so, maybe? We didn’t stay for the entire scholarship portion because it was pretty warm and D was getting overheated. I believe they also awarded some UNCF scholarships at the time-those were larger. D was only in 9th grade at the time so we weren’t in the running for them. Oh! I just remembered-there was a focus on athletes at that fair, with workshops and special advising, and there were a couple of athletic scholarships given out.
What the event was really best for, though, was getting direct information about the schools. We even met some parents who had kids at some of the schools by chance and they talked with us at length about their experiences. As you can imagine, being from the northwest we don’t run into too many people with students at HBCU’s.
@sseamom thanks for your take on the expo. I’m attending this weekend and i was a little apprehensive because we are almost 4 hrs away and i just didn’t know if it would be beneficial to attend.
It’s 2016 does anyone else have an opinion on this expo?