I had DD sign up for this site. I am on my way out shortly so will come back to this later with my observations.
We entered DD’s information for all 4 years and she did qualify for quite a lot of money, BUT, the college costs were also very high.
I ran NPC’s on some of these schools and the costs were very similar to what I anticipated based on the raiseme scholarships and the need based aid I knew she would get. Someone I spoke to said their child got more merit aid than what she qualified for on the raiseme site when she applied, so thought the site was pointless and was mainly about data mining. In our case, I think since we had a high need component, that offset the larger merit IMO. ?
One interesting thing. University of Pittsburgh, including 2 of the branch campuses, started offering scholarships. Someone here on CC did not have that offer on her kid’s raiseme site. She called Pitt and was told they were offering these scholarships to lower income kids on the site. Personally, the awards weren’t high enough to even consider applying there. Also, 2 of our PA state schools were offering scholarships as well. She earned several thousand dollars with them, but they were 2 of the PASShE schools that are would be in the bottom of the rankings.
So all in all, I think it was interesting to see the what was being awarded, and it did have us look at schools we probably wouldn’t have considered. Also, the awards were guaranteed so you know what the minimum award would be.
I do think there was a clear bias against poorer students. Lots of awards for AP classes, visiting their campuses, maybe one or two others I can’t think of right now. School districts w/ high numbers of low income kids simply don’t have these opportunities.
My daughter tried raise.me. She applied to a few schools that were part of raise.me. All of the merit she received from these schools were higher than the raise.me amount and would have been the same if she hadn’t done raise.me I think it has most potential for a kid who isn’t get much merit or financial aid.
@DrGoogle - it is only for kids in US High Schools - American citizen kids study abroad cannot sign up for Raise.me
The the micro-scholarship that my D received for her accepted school, which was lower than the other scholarships that she received from the school, was added on to her financial aid package without affecting the amounts of the other scholarships that the school awarded her. She had one school that would not include it on her FA award letter until after she accepted the admittance offer.
it is another way for not so good colleges to attract students
Does anyone know if the colleges can see all the colleges the student is interested in based on their RaiseMe profile?
My daughter’s raise me account just disappeared. She has entered data since 2016 and now the website says her account does not exist. Anyone else having issues?
I was wondering if anyone’s found that this motivates your kids to do better or participate more? Honestly, I think that’s about the only reason we’d use this as I know merit scholarships will give us as much or more based on what’s been reported so far.
I could see this might work well as a motivator for the youngest who isn’t interested in school right now and could care less if she has a 30 or a 100. She’s brilliant but lazy which is a problem. Her ACT will be high. It was already up near 30 in middle school, but I feel like if she could see a direct correlation between her current classes / extra curriculars and college, she’d put more effort in.