An interesting article I saw today and thought was worth sharing.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/smallbusiness/raiseme-college-scholarship/index.html
Hmmm - Interesting. There are likely FAFSA and federal income tax return implications for recipients.
I saw this too and looked at the site. Seems legit but wondering how it gets distributed and if the college gives money in scholarship awards anyway will they stack this money on top of what they normally give. The site is Raise.me
It says it is guaranteed to be part of the financial package offered if admitted, so no it doesn’t sound like it stacks.
Pretty cool idea. https://www.raise.me/
I was curious about this too so I just emailed them. Here’s the reply…
“When you’re a senior in high school, we’ll also automatically submit your portfolio to colleges you’re following if your profile is complete by their deadline. The scholarships a student earns on Raise.me represent a guaranteed minimum amount of scholarship or grant aid that the student will receive if they are admitted and choose to attend that college. If the student receives a larger scholarship after applying, that larger amount will include or replace the amount that he or she earned on Raise.”
So it’s like a minimum guaranteed scholarship at those schools (if you are accepted). Still kind of impressive that you know the amount and can earn it instead of applying for it and wondering if you get it.
I filled out two years worth of info for my S to get an idea of how the site works and what kind of money we’d be looking at.
How it works: Colleges set certain amounts for things like getting an A (or a B) in a class, taking an AP class, getting a certain score on a standardized test, doing ECs or volunteer hours, etc. You fill out a profile listing what classes you’ve taken, your SAT score, your ECs, etc. Then you click-to-follow the colleges you’re interested in. When you do, you’re shown a tally for each school based on the data you entered.
The amounts are not the same at each school. One school might offer $400 for every A and $300 for every B, while another gives $200 for As and nothing for Bs.
I used S’s real data for his freshman year, then best guess data for his sophomore year. At the mo, he’s got a 3.9uw/4.5 weighted GPA, some APs and dual-enrollment classes, around 80 volunteer hours and a couple of ECs, including one leadership position.
I didn’t select every school, just the ones that had some potential interest for us. All numbers are 4-year totals, so mentally divide by 4 for an annual amount.
Here are the results:
Denison - $32,730 ($8,183/yr, frex)
Lawrence - $27,140
Southwestern - $25,690
Tulane - $12,050
Michigan State - $12,040
Oberlin - $8,090
Texas Tech - $2,840
My guess is that these numbers would roughly double once you input 4 years of HS data, though I’d also guess that some of the schools will have a cap for the maximum they’ll award.
You can rank the participating colleges by how much they’ll offer, so I clicked the #1 and #2 schools just to see what the numbers were.
Wingate U - $60,750
Stetson U - $43,455
Here’s my take: for a high-need family, I’m not sure you’d end up with anything from Raise.me that you wouldn’t have gotten through a regular, need-based application. In our case, none of these amounts were better than our results from the schools’ various net price calculators. For a middle income/doughnut hole family, though, at a school where merit aid is unlikely, and where knocking 10k/yr or more off tuition would really come in handy? Seems like it might be a good deal.
I’ll continue to enter S’s info, but I won’t be counting on this to save our bacon where aid is concerned.
ETA: I think I’ll split this off into its own thread so the site title and data are easy to find.
Some partner colleges:
California Lutheran
Azusa Pacific
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
Dordt College
Tulane University
Flagler College
Lawrence University
Penn State
Fayetteville State University
Beacon College
University of Minnesota Duluth
I wonder what happens to the plethora of student information that is amassed at this website, loads of it personal. This is a real question for me, though I am now officially curious.
More member colleges:
Buena Vista University
Wingate University
SUNY Cortland
Indiana Wesleyan
Converse College
Michigan State
Georgetown
Thanks for the information. I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing this but I wasn’t sure if the program would include colleges DS2 would be interested in applying to. I see California Lutheran and Azusa Pacific participating. Are there any other partner colleges in California or Arizona?
@AlbionGirl : This was all I could find that I could be sure of. I’ll keep looking when I can. Hoping to find something that my daughters might be interested in.
Thanks. Good luck to you and your daughters!
There appear to be conditions set to Penn State’s association with Raise.me.
From Penn State’s website, http://www.ga.psu.edu/35054.htm:
"…Penn State has partnered with the Raise.me program to offer micro-scholarships to students in five key public high schools in the city of Philadelphia and the nearby area. The program allows students to earn scholarship support toward their tuition at Penn State by achieving various success factors while still in high school, including achieving high grades in core coursework, taking honors courses or advanced placement, participating in leadership roles and studying world languages. "
,
Do you have to commit to attending the school? Will it stack with or exclude you from other scholarships from the same school?
No commitment, no stacking, no exclusion.
Is there a list of the partner colleges?
@Madison85 yes but you need an account to view. Looks like 65 total at the moment. The top few (per USN rank of course)
64 Results
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY
Georgia Tech College of…
Atlanta, GA
RPI
Troy, NY
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA
WPI
Worcester, MA
SUNY-ESF
Syracuse, NY
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
University of Dayton
Dayton, OH
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK
DePaul University
Chicago, IL
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA
Missouri S&T
Rolla, MO
UMass Lowell
Lowell, MA
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX
Azusa Pacific University
Azusa, CA
plus (“not ranked by USN” which is baloney but they’re LACs so ranked on a different USN list): Denison, Colby, Flagler, Lawrence, Lewis and Clark, Marist, Oberlin, several others.