How Do I Sign Vermont Permission Slip

How do i document type sign permission slip vermont

- Good evening, I'm Marilyn Cargill and I would like to welcome you to VSAC Shows You How. Tonight's presentation will show you how to file your Vermont Grant and Unified Scholarship Application. We are starting this presentation with a series of poll questions tonight to help our presenter tailor her comments to what is most useful for you. If you haven't already answered the poll questions, there's time to answer them now. During this presentation, we will walk through the entire process from entering your demographic information to signing and submitting your application. Some of you might be wondering if it's worth applying for state grants or scholarships. Last year roughly 3000 Vermonters received over $6 million combined in scholarships from the VSAC booklet. And on average students receive $2,200 a year in a Vermont state grant. We are frequently asked what is the difference between a grant and a scholarship? Grants are need-based aid where eligibility is determined on the financial information provided on the FAFSA and the Vermont Grant Application. Scholarship eligibility is determined based on a competitive process. So it's not just looking at financial need, there's a number of criteria that could be considered. And for example, you might have a particular talent, perhaps you're an outstanding artist or you're an athlete, you might live in a certain geographic area, VSAC has a number of scholarships that we administer that are by county. You might belong to certain groups or certain clubs, or you might be someone who's really active in community service, we have scholarships that address all of those criteria and a significantly large number of others. One of the very best reasons to join a live webinar is to ask questions to the experts. To ask questions tonight if you are on the Zoom platform, just type your question right into the Q&A section. If you are on the Facebook platform tonight, just write your question into the comments. We also plan to have time at the end of the presentation for any additional questions that you might have. So let's get started by meeting tonight's presenter. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Marcia Corey, Marcia Corey is the manager of the VSAC Grant and Scholarship Division and has been helping families apply for state aid for almost 35 years. She is the mother of two and has helped each of her children apply for financial aid so she's got great experience and we are really lucky to have her with us tonight. So Marcia, if you are all set, we are ready to begin. - Great, thank you Marilyn, I am all set and welcome everybody to VSAC Shows You How tonight we are going to show you how to complete a Vermont Grant Application and a Unified Scholarship Application, or what we call the USA. The Vermont Grant is a need-based grant available to Vermont residents pursuing their first bachelor's degree who will enroll full-time or part-time in an undergraduate degree or a certificate program that is approved by the U.S. Department of Education to participate in federal Title IV financial aid programs. For this current school year eligible Vermont students received as Marilyn has already mentioned on average, just over $2,100 in a Vermont Grant. Applications for the Vermont Grant are accepted on a first come first serve basis as long as our funding lasts. In addition to the Vermont Grant, VSAC assists with over 100 different scholarships worth more than $5 million that are all listed in our scholarships for Vermonters booklet. Each scholarship has different eligibility and document requirements, but students only need to complete our unified scholarship application once to apply for as many scholarships from the booklet as they'd like. The deadline to complete the USA for the 2021/2022 academic year is February 11th, 2021. Tonight for our presentation, I will be applying for the Vermont Grant and the VSAC-assisted scholarships for our test student Jane Doe. So Jane's first step to apply for the Vermont Grant or any of the VSAC's assisted scholarships is to create MyVSAC account. To create MyVSAC account, she'll go to www.vsac.org. So I'm going to share my screen now so that we can walk you through this. So once logged into the VSAC www.vsac.org, she looks for the, MyVSAC button in the upper right-hand corner and clicks on that. Once she clicks on that, then she will be presented with a MyVSAC login page. In our example tonight, Jane has already registered for MyVSAC account so I'm not going to go through that process with you. However, if she did not already register for MyVSAC account, she would click the register now button and follow the instructions. A few important tips to know when registering for MyVSAC account. First, the applications are the student's applications, so each student should create their own MyVSAC account and apply for the Vermont Grant and scholarships through their own account, this is very important. Secondly, the student's email address will become their MyVSAC username. So they should use an email address that they will have access to for quite a while. So in other words, we recommend that you don't use your high school email address, for example, as that will end once you graduate from high school. Also each applicant must have their own unique email address as email addresses for MyVSAC cannot be shared by family members. So since Jane has already registered for MyVSAC account, she's going to log in to begin the Vermont Grant and scholarship applications. I'll walk you through that. So her username, as I mentioned, is her email address. (typing on the keyboard) - Marcia, while you're doing that, we have a couple of questions I'm just going to throw out really quickly. One of them is, are all of these just for bachelor's degrees when we're talking about scholarships and grants? Are there any for technical training? So there are both scholarships and grants for full-time part-time and students that are taking training programs. So definitely you can apply if you are in any of those different programs. Another question that we have Marcia is asking, I filled out the generic VSAC scholarship application, do you know if there are any specifically for single mothers or early educators? - Yes, if you're looking in the VSAC assisted, the scholarships for Vermonters booklet, I believe there are some, I know of one, at least one for single parents and there are definitely some for early education. - Perfect, thank you, Marcia. - You're welcome. Okay, so now Jane has logged into her MyVSAC account, and this is the screen that she is coming to. If you're a first time logging in, when you first create register your, MyVSAC account, you will be presented with a terms and conditions page, which basically gives consent to communicate electronically. So we just ask that you read through all of the terms and conditions and then click the accept button. And once you do that, then you'll be brought to this page, which we call our Dashboard page. VSAC uses the Vermont Grant Application, along with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or the FAFSA form to determine a student's eligibility for the Vermont Grant. VSAC will receive FAFSA information directly from the federal government as long as the student lists their state of legal residence on the FAFSA as Vermont. VSAC encourages all Vermonters applying for college to apply for the Vermont Grant. Most of the information we use comes directly from the FAFSA so the Vermont Grant Application really is quick and easy. So let's get started, so from the Dashboard, we're going to click on work with grants. So we're first going to complete the Vermont Grant Application - Marcia, while we're waiting for that to come up, we have a question, can these scholarships and grants be used at graduate school? So the Vermont Grant is only for undergraduate study or for students enrolled at the College of Medicine, doctors program or a veterinary school and that's by state statute. But there are a number of scholarships, Marcia, is that correct? That also can be applied for by graduate students. - Yes, there certainly are and what we encourage everyone to do is get a copy of the scholarships for Vermonters booklet, it is online and we do have actual booklets if anybody would like us to mail one to them, but you really need to go through each scholarship and read the eligibility criteria for each one to see if it's something that you would qualify for based on the criteria but yes, there are definitely scholarships in the booklet for graduate programs. - Thank you. - Okay so Jane has clicked on the work with grants button and she is presented with this screen, which shows her the applications we currently have available for her to apply for. Jane is a senior in high school currently so she will be graduating from high school in May and attending college in September of 2021. So she is going to select the 2021-2022 Vermont Grant Application and she does that by clicking the submit application button. The first page of the application is going to be pre-populated with the information she provided when she created her MyVSAC username and password. So we just ask that you review this information, make sure everything is correct, you can change or edit information if you need to on this screen. But again, I'd like to reiterate that the application should be submitted through the applicants MyVSAC account. So for example, if Jane's brother was going to school, he would need his own MyVSAC account to apply he should not use this one and then change the name to his name. So once you review all of the information on this screen, you can click save and continue, and it will take you to the next screen. And the next two pages are basically instructions, which advise you of the eligibility requirements for the Vermont Grant and whose financial information should be reported on the application. So I'm just going to click through the two instruction pages, and now we're ready, or Jane is ready to start answering the questions for the application. So basically most of the questions are demographic information. So I will just start entering information here for Jane. (typing on the keyboard) And once again, her email address should be the same email address she's been using for her MyVSAC account and it should be a permanent email address that she will have once she graduates from high school. - Marcia there's a question we just got. If someone has already filled out their MyVSAC and they did use their high school email address, is there a way to correct or change that email address? - They are not able to, but they should call our office and we can walk them through that. - So at the end of this presentation, we're going to share a phone number that someone would be able to call and talk to someone in our grant and scholarship staff who could help them with that. - [Marcia] Yes. - Perfect, thank you. - And last question on this page is are you a Vermont resident and Jane is a Vermont resident so she will answer yes. You do have to be a Vermont resident to be eligible for the Vermont Grant. And since she answered yes, she's a Vermont resident, we are asking when she became a Vermont resident. I have lived in Vermont since, Jane was born and raised in Vermont so she is going to put her birthday as her residency date in under this question. And then we ask for the county that she lives in and that is Chittenden, click save and continue. And before we go on with the questions, I just wanted to point out a few things on this application. First of all, you'll notice that we have yellow circles here with question marks. And that indicates that we have help texts on that question for you. So there's just additional instructions that we want to tell you about that question. So if you click on that button, it will provide those additional instructions for you. Also you'll notice the red asterisks next to each question. And that means that the question is required, so you will not be able to leave it blank in completing this application, you won't get an error message. So just put, if you can't answer a question, just put not applicable or if it's a dollar question we ask that you put zero instead of leaving it blank. So question number 17 is the name of the high school from which you have graduated or will graduate. So Jane will be, and this is a dropdown box, which we provide you with all of the high schools in the state of Vermont and some bordering high schools. So Jane's graduated from Burlington High School, and this question asks what she anticipates her enrollment is going to be when she starts college in the fall. And she is going to be going full-time, and select your year in college and it's her first year, so she will be a freshman. And this next question is for the 21-22 school year, will you be enrolled in an early college program? And again, we have help decks here to help you, but what that means is you will be enrolled in a program at a college that you'll be doing your senior year in high school and your freshman year in college during the same year. So for Jane, she is not going to enroll in an early college program so she'll answer no to that and we're going to click save and continue. The next two pages determine if parental information is required on the application. These are the same questions asked on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. So basically we're determining with these questions, whether you need to provide parent information or not. And if you answer all nos to these dependency questions on the next two pages, then parent information will be required in the final section of the application, the assets section. And the parent the student lived with the most during the past 12 months is the parent that should complete the grant application. And this is the same parent who completed the FAFSA form or should complete the FAFSA form. So I will quickly walk through these questions. The first one is, were you born before January 1st, 1998? Basically, we're asking if you're under the age of 24 in this question. Are you married or in a civil union? So Jane's going to answer no to that. At the beginning of the 21-22 school year, will you be working on a master's or doctorate program? And the answer for Jane is no. Are you a veteran or currently serving in active duty? No. Do you have children that you will provide at least have support for? And Jane has no children. Do you have dependents other than a spouse who live with you and receive more than half of their support? And she will answer no to that question as well. Click save and continue. Is she an orphan or a ward of the court? And the answer to that is no. Are you an emancipated minor? No. Are you or were you in a legal guardianship? And the answer to that is no. And then are you in an unaccompanied youth who is homeless? And the answer to that is no. And this final question just asks if she's applied for a dependency override through the financial aid office at the college. So if she answers all no's, but she really has extenuating circumstances where she can't provide parent information, then she can ask the college to waive the parent information and that's called the dependency override. But in Jane's case, she did not do that, so we're going to answer no to that. And since Jane answered nos to all of those dependency questions, this next section is going to be asking for parent information. If she answered at least one yes on any of those questions and she would report her own answers to these questions for her own financial information. And these are the asset questions that we look at in determining eligibility for the Vermont Grant. So the first set of questions is the present resale value of the parent's home. So do they own a home and if so, what is the present value of that? So Jane's parents do own a home that's worth $250,000. The next question is current unpaid mortgage on the home, and they do owe 200,000 on that home. So they're going to put the mortgage in there? The next two questions are asking if the parents own a farm and if they do, they would put the equity or the farm value, excuse me and then the debt that they owe on the farm. In Jane's case, her parents do not own a farm so we are going to just put zeros and again, you can not leave these questions blank so if they don't apply, just put zeros. And the final two questions are asking if her parents own a business. And again, in this case, they do not so she's going to answer zero for those questions and she will click save and continue. This next section is the certification section where Jane will certify that everything is accurate, that she provided on the application. She authorizes VSAC to use her tax return information that we need to determine eligibility. And we're letting her know that everything is held in strict confidence, all of the information that she provides is held in strict confidence and they agree to repay the grant, if any information was provided, that was not accurate. And so Jane has read everything she's answering yes, which means she is signing off on this application, click save and continue. And the next section, because we required parent information, the parents also need to sign off electronically on this application and read the certification information through. So it's basically the same information, the same certification as for the student. And we do need at least one parent to provide their information on this screen. So we're going to click yes, parents first name is Mom and last name is Doe and social security number, I'm just going to make one up. And then email address is optional, we'll provide Mom's email and then we'll click save and continue and that is it. Jane has now completed her application, it has not yet been submitted yet because we do give Jane the opportunity to review her answers before she actually submits the application. So this is our summary page, and you can see the questions are on the left-hand side and her answers are on the right hand side. We ask that you review all your information, please make sure it's all accurate. If you find that you do need to change any answers, what you need to do is go down to the bottom of this page and use these links to get back to the page number. Please don't use the back button, 'cause that does not always work correctly and provide some really wonky information. So use these links to get back to the page, correct your answer on that page, and then click the save and continue buttons throughout the remaining pages and it will bring you right back to this summary page. So once you know that all of your information is accurate, you'll want to click on the submit button and that's, what's actually going to submit your application to VSAC. We do have a lot of people that think that they get to that summary page and they're done and it doesn't actually get submitted so that's a really important step to remember. And how you know you submitted your application is you get to this what's next page. And this page will let you know that it if you need to complete a FAFSA, if you haven't already done so, watch your email and your To-Do Lists and we'll notify you if we need any additional information on your To-Do List. And we'll also email you and notify you when we have determined your eligibility. And we do start determining eligibility for the Vermont Grant in April of next year. And then if you do find that you need additional funding, you can click on this link to find out more information about the Vermont Advantage Loan that we administer at VSAC. - Marcia we have a few questions, quite a few questions, but I'd like to try to answer a couple of them. One of them is if a student is planning to take a gap year or they're planning to not go to school this coming year, how do you know what year to fill out? Should they even be filling applications out this year if they're going to take a gap year in September? - Okay, that's a good question. You have to apply for financial aid every year. So if you're not planning to attend school in the 21-22 academic year, then you don't do not need to complete financial aid applications. You will need to do it at this time next year, too and then you would apply for the school year that you will be attending, so that would be the 22-23 academic year. - Perfect and we've got a few questions on home value. And one of them is if we did a home appraisal for a refi, so they were doing that for a different reason since filling out the grant app and our home value came in higher than what we told you it was on the Vermont Grant app should we call VSAC to change this? How does somebody correct something that perhaps is different than what they originally reported? - Yeah, so once you submit your application, you cannot correct it online. So you would need to call us or better yet, we'd probably want it in writing. So you could email us and let us know what you need changed on the application. And again, we'll give you those email addresses at the end. - Perfect, and Marcia one other question, could you just explain if someone does have a business, it's business value that has to be reported on this application and the debt on that business? - That's correct, so if you own a business, it's really for any of the assets, we ask for the fair market value. If you went to sell that business, what would you sell it for? And I know that for some businesses, that's difficult because if it's just you as the business, that might be difficult, but you might have tools or a building or whatever, it's basically what you would be able to sell that business for if you put it on the market. - Two last questions, and then we'll move on. So if a student's parents are divorced and the student lives with her mom, must both provide information and sign the grant application, or just the mom. - Just the mom. Yes, in the case of parents that are divorced, you would provide the information of the parent who you have lived with the most in the last 12 months. And that is the requirements for the FAFSA form and the grant application follows the same requirements. So whatever parents you provide information for on the FAFSA, that would be the same parent for the grant app. And if that parent is remarried, you would put the parent in the step parents information. - Okay, why don't we move on? Questions are pouring in, but let's keep going and get this one completed so you can show them how to see their To-Do Lists. - Okay, before we move on to the Unified Scholarship Application, I just wanted to show you the To-Do List. So this is once you've completed a grant application, you will be brought to your, what we call the To-Do List. And when you also sign into your MyVSAC account, once you have completed the grant application, and you click on work with grants, you will be brought to this screen as well, moving forward. So this is the screen that will tell you on your To-Do List if you have anything that we need you to do to complete your Vermont Grant Application. And right now you can see that Jane Doe needs to complete her free application for federal student aid, she has not done that yet. We also may use this to tell you some information. So we might tell you that we've determined your eligibility and go look at your awards to see what your eligibility is. On the left-hand side you'll see a number of links. You can go to your demographic information that you provided, that you gave us. You can go to your financial information, and this will include the information you provided on the grant application, as well as what was provided on the FAFSA if we've received that, and we have both the parent and the student information on this screen. So this is important to review this to make sure that you have reported accurate information. You could also go to awards and enrollment, Jane hasn't been awarded yet, but if she was, this would be where they would show her award eligibility, status and then what enrollment. And you can change your enrollment here, if you're full-time, you can change it to part-time and we'll reevaluate your eligibility based on that. So you can change schools here as well, so this is really a self-serve place for your Vermont Grant Are we ready to move on Marilyn? - I want to ask one last question, so Marcia, you have someone who's filling out their application with you, so as you've been showing them what to do, they've been actually moving through the application, and they're saying that they're stuck right now on putting the date in for I have lived in Vermont since, month, month, day, day, and then the four digits for year. If they are stuck on a particular question, is the best way to handle that would be to call us when we give them the contact information and we'll have somebody work with them tomorrow on this? - Yes, but they might've been doing exactly what I did when I first put the date in. You just need to type in the numbers don't put slashes, I think that puts it in there for you. So I don't know if that will help, but I think if you just put, 06, 06 and 2003, it should populate correctly. But certainly yes, if you are stuck, we'll be happy to help you, walk you through that. - Perfect, go ahead, Marcia and let's move on and I'll keep sending questions your way. - Okay, so Jane has now applied for the Vermont Grant, and she's going to move on to the Unified Scholarship Application. As I mentioned, VSAC assists with over 100 different scholarships, they are all listed in the scholarships from Vermonters booklet, these booklets are available online and in high schools across the state and I also mentioned, if you wanted to call VSAC, we'd be happy to mail you on as well. The first step in applying for the VSAC-assisted scholarships is to review the booklet for the instructions on how to apply and to determine which scholarships to apply for. So Jane has done that, she has reviewed the booklet and has determined that she will be applying for the Let's Grow Kids Scholarship for Aspiring Educators. And she's also going to apply for the PedsOne Youth Service Scholarship. She only needs to complete the Unified Scholarship Application once to apply for both scholarships. VSAC will make sure that her application information and any required documents are shared with the scholarship committees. So to submit the USA, she'll go back to her MyVSAC Dashboard and then she'll click on the work with VSAC-assisted scholarships. So we're back to the Dashboard here, and we're going to click on work with VSAC-assisted scholarships. And again, she'll be brought to a page which will list the scholarships that are available, that are currently available to be completed. Oftentimes we are doing two years at the same time since we start applying very early at this point in October. But this is the page that she will come to and again, since she is starting school in September of 2021, she is going to complete the 21-22 Unified Scholarship Application. So we'll click on that link, and just like the grant application, the first page will be pre-populated with the information she provided when she created her MyVSAC username and password. So again, confirm that all of that information is accurate, and if so, she's ready to click save and continue. And this is the instruction page for the Unified Scholarship Application, pretty basic, we will want you to read the booklet basically, first of all read the checklist for success and the instructions on how to apply that's in the booklet, and then read through and identify the VSAC assistance scholarships for which you will be applying. And you do that by reading through the descriptions and making note of the VSAC ID for the scholarships that you do want to apply for. And for your ease, we have a link right here to link to the booklet if you get to this page and you haven't already done that. But since Jane has done that, we're going to click save and continue, and which will bring her to the first set of questions for this application. The Unified Scholarship Application answers questions that are needed to determine if she meets criteria for the specific scholarships for which she's applying. So for example, some scholarships require you to be a resident of a specific town or require you to be working on a specific degree, like an associate's degree or bachelor's degree, a specific major, or perhaps you must be enrolled at a college within the state of Vermont. So I will start again answering these questions for Jane. (typing on the keyboard) Again, the applicant's email address should be the same one she's been using right along. We do ask for the gender here, female, and this is the applicant's current marital status. So Jane is single, and again, are you a Vermont resident, which is yes so we'll click save and continue. And once again, it's asking for the residency date, and maybe I can do it correctly here, six to demonstrate, so you just need to put in the numbers and it fills in the slashes for you. The town of legal residence within Vermont and so her legal residence is Burlington. And the reason we ask this is sometimes your mailing address and your town of legal residence is different. And some scholarships ask that you specifically reside in a certain town so that's why we ask that question on this application. And then the number of years in town, she's lived there all her life so we're going to put 17. This next question asks if you are a U.S. citizen or eligible non-citizen. And we do provide you with a definition that is used on the FAFSA, that for what it means to be an eligible non-citizen for financial aid purposes. So Jane is a U.S. citizen so she's going to answer yes to that question. And the name of the high school from which she will graduate or have graduated and that's Burlington High School. Her high school graduation status, there's two answers here, I am a high school senior, or working on my GED and expect to receive a High School Diploma or GED certificate by the end of the current school year. And then I've already graduated from high school or have a GED. So basically there are some scholarships in our booklet that are specifically for graduating high school seniors only so that's the reason why we ask this question. So since Jane is a graduating high school senior, she's going to click that button and then click save and continue. - Marcia we have a couple of questions. So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to throw a few at you to answer. One of them is can the scholarship app be started at one time and completed later, or do you need to do it all at the same time? - Oh, that's a great question. And this is the same answer for the scholarship app and the grant application. You do not need to complete it all at once, it will automatically save for you so the next time you sign into your MyVSAC account and click, you'll have to click on work with VSAC-assisted scholarships, and then click on complete the application. And then once you do everything that you've already provided, we'll pre-populate, and will still be there. As long as on that page, you've hit save and continue that information will be saved and you can continue the next time you go on. - Okay and then there's another one here that says, is there a limit to how many scholarships you can apply for? - I will be getting to that on that screen, but on the application, there is a limit, you can apply for up to 10 scholarships, but we do provide you with a way to add additional scholarships if you do want to provide apply for more than 10 and I will walk through that with you. - Perfect, thank you. And one last question that we're getting a lot is how can we request a scholarship for Vermonters booklet? And I just want to say at the end of this presentation, I'm going to share contact information, both email and phone numbers and tell you how you can use those certainly to request the scholarship booklet. It's also available online and you're very welcome to go to vsac.org and I'd go to the scholarship section and you can download the scholarship booklet and look at it live online. Thank you, Marcia. - You're welcome. So the next question we have is select a program or degree you pursued during the academic year 21-22, and she will be going for her bachelor's degree, let's save and continue. And then the next question, or the next two questions are asking the college that she most likely will attend during the 21-22 academic year. I know a lot of students when they first apply, they are applying for a number of colleges and maybe haven't made a decision yet. But we do ask for just one in this application and that's why we say perhaps put your most likely college down and you certainly can change that at any time, just by letting us know, sending us an email or giving us a call. But the first step of this is to determine what state the college is in. So Jane will be attending the University of Vermont, so we're going to put, filter this by Vermont student Vermont. And then that brings down in this dropdown box, which is the dropdown box that has all of the colleges, it will bring you to filter by the state, so you don't have to look through a huge list of schools. So at Vermont, and we'll have all of the colleges that are located in Vermont underneath this section. So then you'll just need to find, and they are alphabetical, so you just need to find the university of Vermont, and click on that. If for some reason you cannot locate your school in our dropdown list, which does happen, we don't have every single school on our system, you can click on can't find school here. And what that will do is once you click on save and continue on this page, it will bring you to a special page that will ask for the name of the school and the address of the school and then we will add that to your application once that comes into our office. But Jane was able to find her schools so she doesn't need to click on that. Will you receive an associates degree from any college or university by September 1st? And Jane is going to answer no. And will you have received a bachelor's degree? And the answer is no. And again, there are some scholarships that you cannot have already received an associates degree or a bachelor's degree to receive them, so that's the reason we have those here. Select your field of study, so Jane is going to be going into early childhood education, so we're going to click that and her year in school will be her first year and her enrollment status is going to be full-time. Did I click it? All right, we seem to be stuck here. - So Marcia, while you're doing that, let me just answer a few more questions that have come in. So I have a student who says, "I am an (indistinct) and nursing student at VTC and will be seeking my bachelor's degree through an online degree program next fall. Does VSAC award scholarships to students who already have degrees." - Again, yes there are some that we do and yeah, the scholarships that we administer in our booklet are all, they're based on whatever the donor wanted that criteria to be so there are certainly are some that are for grad... They're open to all students, which would mean graduate students. There's some that are just for graduate students and there's some that are just for undergraduate students. So again, you just really need to look through the booklet and see if any apply to you. - [Marilyn] Perfect. - Okay, let me see. Not quite sure what I did wrong there, but this'll work. Oops, I'm not putting a date in here somewhere. Oh, I'm sorry I missed the question that's why I can't go on. So question 25 is day you expect to graduate from this college or university. So she's going to be going four years so she's going to graduate hopefully in 2025. And again, this is not set in stone, we just wanted to have some idea of their graduation date. So now let's see if it'll work, there you go. - Marcia just very quickly, you have one more question here. What is the significance of the most likely to attend college field? How is that used in the scholarship process? - Well, because we need to know what college you're going to to first of all, to be able to award for a college and disburse to the college, we need to know where you're going. But we also, like I said, some scholarships do only pertain to certain schools we do have a few scholarships that you must be attending a school within Vermont. So if you don't put a Vermont school there on your application, then you would not be considered for those scholarships that are specifically for Vermont colleges. - Perfect. - This next screen, VSAC assists with some scholarships that students are nominated for, that are not found in the booklet and with scholarships available to members of the Vermont National Guard and a handful of scholarships require additional information. So this page allows students to indicate if they're applying for any of these scholarships. So the first question is, did your high school guidance counselor or a VSAC outreach counselor instruct you to complete USA for a nominated scholarships? So you would know if that was the case I hope, so Jane is going to say no to that question. And then are you a member of the Vermont National Guard? And she is not, we do have one scholarship that is specifically for Vermont Guard members. And then this question here, these scholarships that are listed here have very specific additional requirements that we collect on this application. And so by saying yes to that question, we will present you with those questions but if you're not applying to any of those scholarships, then you won't be presented with those questions. So Jane is not applying to any of those scholarships, so she's going to answer no and just click save and continue. - Marcia we got a question that I think is an important one to answer. If my student is applying to eight colleges, should we wait to go through the USA until after we receive the letters of acceptance and make our selection? - It might be too late if you do that, so keep in mind that our deadline date is February 11th of 2021. So for any scholarships in the booklet, there is a very strict deadline and we have to have the application and all required documents. So I would recommend if there's scholarships in there that require a certain college, and there's the possibility that you'll be attending that school, that you might want to put that one on your application so you'll be considered for that scholarship. Certainly at any time, once you do decide what school or what college you will be attending, and it's not the one that you put on the Unified Scholarship Application, you will need to let us know and we will have a form that you can complete to let us know of any change in school that you have. - Thank you. - Unfortunately there's might be a little bit of a timing issue with that. On this screen is where you're going to put the scholarships that you want to apply for. And again, you'll look at the scholarship booklet and find out what the VSAC ID is for the scholarships and look for that in these dropdown box. So, as I mentioned, Jane is going to apply for the Let's Grow Kids Scholarship, which is this one here and the PedsOne Scholarship, which is there. And as you can see, there's room for five scholarships on here, someone had asked how many you can apply for, and you can apply for 10. You'll do the first five on this page, if you answer, do you have any more scholarship IDs to add if you answer, yes, we will provide you with another screen to enter five more and that will be the limit on the application. But as I mentioned, there is a worksheet that you could complete to add more scholarships and I'll show you where that is when we're done. But since Jane is only applying for two, she's going to answer no to this question and click save and continue. And then she's done the Unified Scholarship Application, pretty much all of the questions have been completed. Again, this is the certification form that she will need to read and sign. Basically, it's saying that you certify that everything is accurate on the application, you are giving VSAC authority to share the financial information with the scholarship committees and all of the information provided with the scholarship committees. And let's see, and then that also on here is giving us permission if you are a recipient of a scholarship to do a publicity release on that. So we do like to publicize the scholarships and the students that are awarded. So if you just read through and Jane needs to just click yes and click save and continue. And since there's no parent information on the unified scholarship application, parents are not required to sign this form. So once again, you'll see the summary page, read through it, if you need to make any changes to your answers that you gave, you'll want to use the links below here to go to the page numbers and correct the answer, and then click save and continue through the remaining pages and you'll come back to this summary page. So Jane's information is all accurate, so she's going to click submit, and that means that the application has actually been submitted and will get sent to VSAC electronically. And again, you'll come to a what's next page or what should you do next and you'll just read through that and click the continue button. Important to know for scholarships is by completing the Unified Scholarship Application, you're certainly not done by any means. All of the scholarships require at least one piece of additional information, what we call required document. I think every single one requires an essay to be completed and the general essay, and that you will see instructions for that in the booklet a lot of the scholarships require at least one recommendation letter. So you'll need to get a recommendation letter and send that into VSAC to complete your application. So it's very important that just because you completed the USA, doesn't mean you're done, you have to make sure that you get all of your required documents submitted by the deadline date in order to be considered for the scholarship. So we're going to click continue here and she'll come back to her page for the Dashboard page. So just a couple of things more to just let you guys know about is, as I mentioned, required documents are very important. And we do give students the opportunity to upload the documents as a way to get them to VSAC, rather than you certainly can mail them or email them to us. But uploading is very easy and quick, so that's certainly an option. And by clicking the upload scholarships document, you will be presented with the uploader page to do that and I'm not going to upload a document here, but I'll just show you that to upload a document you'll select the document type from the dropdown list. So for example, if she wanted to upload her essay, so she's typed her essay, it's on her computer, it's ready to go. So she would select essay one general, and then she'll click the browse button to find the document on her computer and select it, and then click the submit button. And that will automatically upload the document to VSAC and it will show over here in this yellow box that that has been uploaded and you can certainly do that for any of the required documents that are on this list here. A lot of the high schools also have this capability so if you're asking for a letter of recommendation from a high school, you can ask them to upload it as well, and they can do it right from there. They have a MyVSAC account as well, and they are able to upload documents for students that have applied. And then one last thing on this page is this is the button that you'll want to select if you want to add any additional scholarships once your application has been submitted. So once it's submitted, you won't be able to go back and add scholarships, but you can use this link to do that and then we will get those scholarships, those additional scholarship sent to VSAC added to your application. - But Marcia, that must be done before the February deadline? - Yes, for scholarships, scholarships as Marilyn mentioned at the beginning of this presentation are competitive, we have a deadline date and it's very strict deadline date. So the application and all required documents must be postmarked or uploaded by midnight on February 11th of 2021. - So one of the questions we have Marcia real quickly is are there directions about letters of recommendation? How do people know what you want them to write? - Yes, there's instructions on all of that in the booklet. So I think the first four pages of the booklet are instructions on how to apply on all of the required documents and what they mean and how to get them to VSAC. So yes, it's all in the booklet. - [Marilyn] Great. - And again, certainly if you have a question, once you've gone to the booklet, please call us and we'll be happy to help you. So I am done with my presentation. I've showed you, Jane has applied for the Vermont Grant Application and she's applied for two of VSAC-assisted scholarships. She'll continue to check her grant and scholarship accounts through MyVSAC to confirm that VSAC has received the documents needed to complete both of her applications and then we'll show you at the end our email addresses and our phone numbers if people still have questions for us. - Marcia another great question we got is what is the timeframe? So they're filling these applications, their grant application, and maybe scholarship applications out in October or November, December, whenever they do that, when might they hear? - Yeah, that's a good question. So for the Vermont Grant, we do not start awarding our Vermont Grant until April. That is to do with when we need to make sure we have the funding from the legislature to start awarding. So we do that in and starting in April and then we award continuously throughout the year once applications become complete. And we do try to do it in April so that you are given that information before the May 1st date that you have to notify colleges of whether you'll be attending or not. So we definitely are aware of that and we try to get that information out to students as quickly as we can so that they can make an educated decision on where they're going to school. And the same is true for the scholarship. So for all of the scholarships in the booklet that we go by the deadline date, the deadline date is February 11th and then we take the next few months to get everything together, enter all of the information that came in. We need to get all of the documentation for each scholarship to the committee, for the scholarships and then the committees have to have time to meet and to review the information and determine the recipients of the scholarship. So we do try to have that all done by mid April or so and that's when we would notify the students. - Great, couple of more quick questions and then if someone could please put the slide up for contact information, that would be great. Marcia this one says, hi, I'm a medical student, received a grant this year, I was wondering when would be the best time for me to reapply? - Anytime now you can apply. So the applications are available starting in October for the next school year so you could apply anytime after that. - Perfect another real quick question is there's a minimum for the general essay, but there's not a maximum that's listed in the literature. Do you know what a maximum would be? - No, we don't really have a maximum, but I would just recommend that it's probably not more than two pages long. Remember that the committees are reading a lot of information about a lot of students. So the essay is your opportunity to let tell the committee about yourself and to answer any questions about the scholarship you applied to compete for that scholarship, but you don't want it to be too long that it takes too much time for them to read. So, I would say between a page and two pages is usually what we see for essays. - Perfect, so first, I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight, I know we've run just a little bit long, but I do want to give you contact information for us. If you have questions about applying for your state grant or a scholarship, or if you had questions tonight that we did not get to and I appreciate all of the questions that people sent to us, please, you can email us at grants@vsac.org or at scholarships@vsac.org, or you can call us toll free 1 800-882-4166 and we are open Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. VSAC is also doing one-on-one Zoom counseling sessions on filing forms. So if you feel like you need more help than just watching this webinar, you are very welcome to go to the website and there is a section that will allow you to register and let us know that you are interested in having a one-on-one counseling session so that is also available. So again, I thank everyone for joining us this evening, we really appreciate your questions, we hope that you have found this helpful, and we will be offering another VSAC Shows You How on a different topic next month. Thank you and good night.