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good evening everybody we are super excited to have you tonight um my name is madeline cano i am the assistant director of diversity inclusion and access with the office of admissions at simpson college my colleague emily radke the assistant director of admissions is also on the call she will be monitoring the chat if you've got any kind of questions you can interact with her in the chat box tonight we have a full plate of content to cover and i hope that you all are fully prepared we want to make sure that we can help you all make college as affordable as possible and honestly there's always every year a lot of money that gets left on the table so we want to make sure that you have access to everything possible regardless of what institution you decide to attend um so tonight we're going to be covering how to maximize college scholarship opportunities whether it is through simpson college or through private resources we're going to cover all of those basics so i want to kick things off with just some common terminology uh a lot of times if you're you know if you were a first generation college student like me and you're looking at the process it can be really daunting uh unfortunately sometimes in academia there's a lot of jargon and words that it's like what is this even what is this like i don't even know what this means can you let's simplify this so we're going to go through some of the common things that you will see when you're applying for like your financial aid or anything like that so first i want to jump into the next slide which is cost of attendance so you'll see cost of attendance on most colleges websites um but it could mean different things for different institutions it also is referred to as a coa so when you are looking at a college's website the cost of attendance typically includes these five things this is definitely the case for simpson so what's included in your cost of attendance is tuition and fees your room and board which is like your dorm and your meals books and supplies anything related to transportation so if there's like parking included in there um if there is you know some of the bigger institutions might have on-campus busing um and then any personal expenses a lot of times students can get confused and think that um you know their offers are a full ride uh when really it just covers tuition for example um so that's just something to be clear about when someone says cost of attendance that is everything included all encompassing the complete cost to attend an institution and a lot of times on financial aid awards you will typically just see tuition and fees and room and board included on your notifications and awards sometimes books and supplies transportation and personal expenses are not included on those things because they vary based on what you're planning to study um and just you know your general expenses some of us you know are a little bit more thrifty and some of us like a lavish lifestyle so there's different different strokes for different folks just kind of depends on what's best for you so those are kind of things you'll see when it comes to the cost of attendance the next thing i want to chat about is efc and this is expected family contribution um i do know that just like a quick update that i do believe the federal government is sort of moving away from this however for you all who are applying for fall 2021 you will see this um on your awards and this is a a way that admissions teams and institutions are able to determine and measure what is affordable for you so efc means expected family contribution and it is just the formula or measurement of a student's ability or your family's ability to pay for any kind of post-secondary expenses and the impactful things that you're going to notice and the way that this is calculated is based on your dependency status so if your parents still claim you on your taxes you're a dependent um if you are not in your you you know have your own uh taxes or maybe you're in foster care or something like that you would be an independent it'll be based on your family's income so we will look at uh your parents tax returns from the previous year to determine affordability and then we'll also look at and see if you have any other siblings that are currently in college because that obviously is going to impact what your you know affordability looks like and how much you're going to be able to pay for tuition and so this formula kind of varies but in general what the actual formula is is the cost of attendance so those five things those five categories we just talked about minus your estimated family contribution which will equal your financial need so that just tells a college this is kind of how much this family is going to need in aid from your college in order to support so your estimated family contribution is more or less what we think what the federal government thinks that your family could pay out of pocket so financial need is really a lot of what simpson bases are scholarships off of besides your academic performance and merit the second biggest category is financial need and i would say across the board most universities use this formula in order to calculate their financial need and provide different scholarship opportunities for folks okay so what i want to chat about really quick now is just general topics so if you are wondering like okay how am i going to pay for college where does all this stuff come from this all will come from these five categories right here so majority of funds come from these five categories you have the federal government which is through your fafsa which is an application that everyone submits in order for institutions to determine their financial need we aren't really going to cover a whole lot on fafsa because we've done several presentations on it already during this cycle however if you check your chat emily's going to drop the youtube link to our financial aid basics where our director of financial aid will cover and talk about all the things related to the fafsa what it is why it's important why you need it um and any just 101 questions on that because we've already covered that um for the past semester so you can definitely check that out on our youtube channel so there is a link in the chat that you'll be able to check out and watch after this presentation i highly encourage you to check out our youtube channel simpson college in general just because there's a ton of information on there on different programs activities campus life all that good stuff okay so back to the nitty-gritty federal government fafsa that's how they determine where you get that funding from again the states also have different funding which i will cover specifically in this presentation i am going to focus a lot more on iowa because our institution is located in iowa but if you are located outside of iowa in any other state check out your department of education website for your state you will be able to find the same resources available to you as a resident of arizona of texas of any other state besides iowa but for the purposes of this presentation we will be talking specifically about some iowa focused things and then colleges and universities are definitely going to provide a lot of scholarships so it might be based on your academic performance some colleges are able to give awards based on athletics um and then everything else will be based on financial need so after that equation your estimated family income cost of attendance and we're able to see what that looks like for your actual attendance and financial need private resources which we'll dig into those are anything ranging from um non-profits different organizations national foundations to banks chambers of commerce those types of things and then employers and people always forget about employers but talk to your parents about where they work a lot of times there you know some big employers and even small employers offer scholarship opportunities for children of people who they employ so like in des moines for example there are several big insurance companies and i know for a fact that nationwide and principal do offer scholarship programs for the children of employees who work for them so just chat with your parents and ask them to inquire about any kind of scholarship opportunities that might be available um again a little bit goes a long way and and the more that you can be debt free the better so highly encourage you to chat with your parents about that okay now we're going to dig into simpson college's specific scholarship programs so i'm going to turn it over to emily and she is going to cover some of this content all right hey everyone thank you again for taking the time and joining us tonight just to talk a little bit about um really how can we do what the title of this session says secure the bag we want to make sure that simpson is not only the right choice for you in your education but also it's an affordable one so the first thing we're going to go over here is just talk a little bit just about some of the specific scholarships and grants that are offered to simpson students so since you guys are all admitted you guys already know every student that is admitted to simpson will be awarded um basically a cumulative high school gpa scholarship so that's a scholarship that is based on your gpa and your high school gpa and it is annual okay so um basically starting off um you know if you have at least a 2.8 gpa you will receive that 22 000 scholarship and then the higher your gpa the more money you get so um you know this is something to where we really want to make sure that we are awarding students for your hard work during those high school years um and making sure that again you know the simpson experience is affordable in offering you this early scholarship amount um the other ways um are of course we do have merit and need-based grants so excuse me merit-based scholarships and need-based grants so um so students um based on your fafsa and what the efc is then we will be able to provide um various different grants the one that we are most notable for is our simpson promise grant which we do a lot which is a full tuition scholarship um to students whose families own less than sixty five thousand dollars so uh or excuse me sixty thousand dollars so um that is one grand program that we currently do have we also do have the um simpson access grant that is a full tuition and dollar amount grant for undocumented and daca students and then last but not least additional scholarship opportunities that the college does offer um are essentially what we call a special interest scholarship so as you can see here from this list um these are scholarships that are that pertain to students that do have a vested interest in one of these programs whether that be social justice community service and volunteer work mock trials speech and debate theater history etc we encourage students to not only apply for these additional scholarships from simpson but to apply to as many of them as you want um first num reason is because these scholarships could add anywhere from 500 to 2 000 to your overall package that you're getting from simpson and these are also renewable scholarships so once you are awarded the scholarship your freshman year the scholarship will stay with you all four years that you are at simpson um last but not least about these scholarships they're stackable so you can apply for all of them or you can apply for just two of them it's not it's not a situation to where you can only apply for one and potentially get one and we encourage all of you since you are currently admitted please make sure that you are taking some time going to our website and reviewing these scholarships and reading the requirements because these scholarships will be due on february 1st right um and then the additional scholarships and that we do have at simpson are really um in reference to legacy so um if you um essentially if your um parent did attend simpson then there is a one thousand dollar scholarship that you can qualify for if you have a brother or sister um that is currently attending simpson that is another opportunity to um to get a one thousand dollar scholarship and then last but not least if you have a parent that works at an ins at one of the other private schools here in iowa then you could essentially do um tuition exchange which would essentially cover your cost of tuition and at that point you're only paying room meals and fees awesome thank you emily of course and she will also again there are full details for all of the applications for these scholarships on our website emily will put the link in the chat for you again that link that she's about to give you is going to have basic information about financial aid in general if you just scroll to the bottom there will be something called other scholarships or other specialty programs and you will see all of the scholarships that we just listed and the amounts the ranges for those grants available as well as the requirements so please be sure to read through all of those details there's different requirements again for each of those programs so we just want to make sure that you have everything that's available to you you've got about two weeks to kind of get that stuff together so please definitely check that out okay we're going to talk now about the different um state grants and programs that are available as well as some private opportunities so again like i said earlier i am focusing some of this stuff on iowa specific however if you come from another state your state most definitely has similar resources available to you all you need to do is go to your state's department of education website and they're pretty navigable they're pretty easy to find but all of your information will be labeled on there for these different grants so for the state of iowa if you are a resident of the state of iowa are graduating from an iowa high school these will apply to you whether you're a first year student or a transfer student you know all of these different things apply there are some specific requirements again for some of these but just make sure you read the fine print when you're applying and checking them out you don't want to waste your own time right your time is precious so make sure that you're reading the fine print so on the left you've got need-based state grants and again this will all be based off of that very important fafsa that you have turned your parents have turned in so it's all based on your parents whether it's a single parent or a two-parent household it will be based off of their income and taxes from the previous year so for example for this year we're looking from last year 2019. uh so we have the iowa tuition grant which is specifically for private schools only so if you decide to attend simpson you would be considered for the iowa tuition grant you have the iowa vocational tech grant as well as the kb grant um and these are specific to community college or if you are planning on going into anything that is related to a trade um so definitely check that out if you know some let's just be real right like for your institutions are not necessarily for everybody and that's totally fine we want to make sure that you're making the right decision for you so make sure that you check out all of your options because there are grants available for everybody whether you choose to do any kind of vocational program at community college or go to a four-year school hopefully that four-year school is simpson we have different programs available for stu for youth and students who are in the foster care system or who have been in the foster care system and then we also have uh gear up so that's for folks who are actually in the gear up program in your high school and i know gear up is definitely across the country so if you are a gear up student you already know that you're a gear up student if this is the first time you're ever hearing about gear up then these scholarships definitely would not apply to you because you're not currently participating in their programming so uh but if you are a gear up student be sure to check that out i think th t your gear up leaders have probably already talked to you about these scholarships but again just make sure that you're checking that out most of the need-based state grants will automatically apply to your um financial aid so for the most part you usually don't have to do anything additional um they can kind of see that you're planning on going to a specific school and they'll they'll be able to apply that to your financial aid package and they are communicating with our financial aid departments to make that happen the other aspect is the non-need-based state grants and these are definitely things that you are going to want to apply for so for example if you are interested in participating in the national guard there's money available for that um a state fair scholarship from former governor terry branstad honor scholarship for those who have high achieving academic success and then iowa specifically has a teacher shortage forgivable loan program so we are definitely encouraging people to go into the education field iowa public schools need teachers um so there's definitely some money involved there if that's the career path that you want to choose so again you can find all of this information on the department of education's website for your specific state so again if you're not from iowa check out your state's specific website you'll be able to find all this information there private resources this is the part that can get very overwhelming and very confusing so i want everyone to just kind of like take a deep breath and exhale because there is a lot of money every year left on the table each year just privately over 1.7 million dollars goes out in scholarships and that's kind of like on the low end so there is money to be had and you can get it and we're going to help you figure out how to do that so what i mean by private resources after you've already filled out your fafsa and you've got your financial need from your college and now the college has said okay this is how much your expected family contribution is this is how much you know your fafsa tells us that you can afford um and let's just you know for fun say that it's ten thousand dollars per year that's how much that that institution says that you can afford and you're thinking okay how am i going to pay for 10 000 per year five thousand dollars per semester what does that look like for me on a monthly basis you know that's a lot of money check out a lot of these resources because you're going to be able to cover some of those costs and with private money you have more liberty in terms of how you spend it so you can apply it to tuition you could apply it to uh you know your books and supplies uh you could apply it to really kind of anything that you want maybe living if you're not living on campus for example it could be that so it really just depends and each of these private scholarships again have their own requirements so read the fine print and read it twice to make sure you understand what the requirements are so that way you know what's going on but you're gonna see things like foundations so nationally this is really common these big foundations right you know um honestly like folks like jeff bezos and you know bill gates like those people are the type of people that have foundations um and you'll you'll find that there's ample money to be had there again it is more competitive because it is on a national basis and sometimes they tend to be program specific so you know melinda gates for example has scholarships that are focused on women in stem right uh so if that's applies to you check it out so this just takes a little bit more research on your end to kind of figure out what that looks like community organizations this is really good again these are national statewide and local i would say you know your chances of getting scholarships from community organizations is going to be higher if they're a locally based organization and if you have volunteered with that organization so be sure to kind of check that out any local businesses there are tons and tons of local businesses that provide scholarship opportunities for um you know not only their employees but just people who live in the community and typically these scholarships tend to be smaller but let me tell you like a hundred dollars here and there it's much better than paying it later so just get it covered go after it apply for it spend the time and do it corporations like bigger bigger companies definitely have a lot of those types of things this is where you might see those employee incentive programs so if your parents work for wells fargo or something like that then there definitely is probably some scholarship opportunities there local chambers of commerce so chambers of commerce are literally the business leaders of your local town or your county your community and almost always the chambers of commerce have different scholarship programs available as well churches and other places of worship are really great options too um so if you happen to be a person of faith uh check with your you know local church or your place of worship and see what options they have available some of them require you to be a member of that congregation um some of them don't so just make sure you're looking into that sometimes it's faith-based where maybe you don't attend that specific place of worship but you are of that specific faith right you do you know worship uh in that denomination specifically so just check that out and the last place which people don't think about often but the place where everyone keeps their money banks uh banks have a lot to offer specifically credit unions so highly highly highly recommend especially right now um if you're working like a part-time job or something see where you're banking see what kind of resources they offer if you are able to open up a bank account another one with a credit union i highly recommend just because they offer what i've noticed anyway is that they tend to offer a lot more scholarships and credit unions want to reinvest locally so be sure to check those out and make sure that you are able to access all the resources that you can so those are the general categories and now i'm going to talk a little bit about how we can find that money right okay so there are a ton of ways to research it like i said there's literally millions of dollars left on the table each and every year um people getting after it and trying to make sure that they leave college debt free that's that's the goal right we don't want you to leave college you know with a ton of a ton of debt right because we just want you to be able to be as successful as possible when you start your career so however there's a lot of different search engines and ways to find those things that could be sort of overwhelming so these are my top three these are not the only three that are available to you out there and maybe your your high school counselor has sort of talked to you about some of these already um there's a variety of different search engines out there i specifically like these for very particular reasons so my top one is an app you can download on your phone called scholarly and this was created a few years ago actually by a college student um he was a computer science guy and he was just having a hard time finding scholarships he was overwhelmed by the process and he thought okay there has to be like an easier way to organize this uh how can i do this so he literally created an app and it's almost like a social media platform you create a profile and then that profile based off of your academic profile your financial need your personal interests what you plan to study where you live any other identifiers too if you belong to a specific group of people you can put all of that in there and it's obviously as many details you put in there as possible is better and then that app will literally pair you with scholarships across the country um and it pairs you based on the likelihood the percentage in which it thinks that you could probably get the scholarship so it will pair you with lots of scholarships but it will rank them in order from you're most likely if you apply for this you most likely would be considered for this scholarship so definitely look into that download that scholarship owl is another really great one if you have heard of the common app so for folks who are really interested in a ton of schools you can apply to colleges through the common app where you literally type in your information one time and then you send your application off to hundreds of schools i don't recommend it i think it's better if you apply specifically to just you know through college's own personal applications however when it comes to scholarships that could be really helpful if you're you've got too much going on maybe you're a dual sport athlete or you volunteer a lot and you're just like a really busy student scholarship owl could be really good for you um so it's essentially one application one-stop shop and it submits your information to thousands of scholarships based off of what you are interested in this says focus a little bit more on academics so again it will send out your application based on what you think you might study so if you're a student and you know for sure you're going to go into nursing or you want to go into physical therapy or you know whatever um it will kind of base things off of that the last one i really like is scholarship advisor and i like this because it has a tracking element to it so again this is another right different thing to help you figure things out to make sure that you are staying on track it's an extensive database it's huge it has thousands and thousands of scholarships however when you create your profile it also tells you where you're at in the process so let's say you apply to 10 scholarships it will tell you the date that you applied it will tell you and track things if you've gotten a response from you know said donor so that's really nice because it formats it for you so that you can kind of keep up and keep track of where you're at whether you've been awarded or not um and different deadlines that are coming up so if you like star a scholarship but you haven't applied for it yet it will send you an alert and tell you hey that deadline's coming up in two weeks and i see you haven't applied yet but you started the scholarship you better make sure that you submit that so again these are three of my favorites just for efficiency purposes these are not the only tools and search engines available but these are the ones that i feel like are the most unique they're the most user-friendly and they're the ones that i like the best personal preference okay these next things are the big search engines so it's like the google of finding scholarships and you probably have heard of at least one of these for sure again i i picked these based on accessibility for people and i picked them based on familiarity as well no one likes to log onto a website and just get confused as to what the heck you're supposed to do so i like these websites the best just because they are again very user friendly college board is super super common they are by far my favorite website to check out mainly because they keep it very up to date so sometimes you'll look at websites and you'll see like okay this hasn't been updated since september like it's january what's going on here uh college board is not like that they're on top of their game they're checking things pretty frequently i also like that you're able to search by specific qualifiers so what i mean by that is you can search based on a variety of different criteria you can search based on um academic preferences you can search based on your particular identity whether that be gender any cultural background religious background activities anything that you might have interest in or anything that really applies to you as an individual you can narrow your search based on that which is really really nice because there honestly are scholarships for everybody and i know that because my brother got the weirdest scholarship when he was applying to school he is a lefty he played baseball and he pitches right-handed and left-handed which is very odd he got literally a scholarship for being left-handed i kid you not so there is money out there available for every single person which is really great capex is great because this is a very trusted source for people who want to donate for you'll find a lot of corporate scholarships here there's over 11 billion dollars in scholarships given out annually just from the capex platform alone so again this is really great um looking at especially if you're thinking of going into an up-and-coming industry or really popular industry and what i mean by that from what i've seen from the trends is the healthcare field and stem is those are two huge industries that are just growing exponentially um not only in the united states but globally and so there are a lot of companies that are investing in students because they're investing in the workforce potential future employees which is great chegg you will get more familiar with as you move on um in your college search because chegg is one of those applications that it's a company that also provides books as well so you can rent books from chegg when you get into college which is really nice it's a really detailed database and a lot of times you can search based on if you don't want to complete an essay because i would say that a majority of scholarships you're going to be applying for they're going to require you to complete some sort of essay at some point but you can narrow it down and you can filter out if you don't again if you don't have the time you can filter it out and make sure that you are looking at some of the scholarships that don't require any kind of essay so again it'll just be looking at strictly your details so the more details you put in about yourself such as your academic profile and more of those qualifying identifiers that will help you um i do think that essays really give you a leg up and tell you a lot more about yourself which is really about the actual you know who you are and what you're looking to do in college so i highly recommend searching for some of those but it's kind of nice to not have to constantly just write essays all the time which is good again these are not just all of the search engines that are out there but these are the top three that i really like just for again being user friendly and having a vast amount of scholarships available so when you're looking to search for scholarships you're really wanting to create a narrow search so you never just want to write like log on to google and type in okay scholarships like you know where that's going to lead you is down a really big rabbit hole so you want to be as specific as possible and what you're looking for so specifically some things i would recommend checking out is academic programming so potentially if you know the area in which you want to focus on you can narrow your search based on academic programs you can narrow your search based on location whether it's where you're from or potentially where you're going right so this is again really helpful for students who um maybe international students it's pretty helpful to with that but there's also some other um scholarships available based on if you're from a particular region like the midwest the east coast west coast those types of things background and identity this has grown this pool of scholarship money um for these qualifying identifiers has grown exponentially over the past decade so i highly highly recommend narrowing your search down based on this as well and these are just a couple examples this in no way is the limit right but these are the common ones that most people tend to search by which would be race and ethnicity religion or if you're a member of the lgbtq plus community again there are other qualifiers and identifiers available out there such as um just personal interests or hobbies in which you participate in but you can always search based on this as well which is really good and you can combine multiple so for example i mean like i said women in stem that's a huge thing make sure you kind of check that out as well and then lastly life experiences this is something that you wouldn't think would be applicable to searching for funding however um depending on you know just kind of what your life experiences have been there are lots of foundations and nonprofits that support people who have come from a variety of different backgrounds foster care is a big situ is a big one that i see a lot um potentially if you have um if you have refugee status for example if you've had any kind of experience related to um like political violence or something like that there's a ton of things available for you so those are things that i think most students forget about or think that there's just not money available for it however there's lots of foundations out there that want to support students who have come from various backgrounds so i encourage you to think about some of those things and base your searches off of that as well okay i talked a little bit previously about how you're going to get this money right and a lot of them is related to the essays um but when you're in a funk and just kind of writing writing writing you know sometimes those essays can get a little boring and so we put together just some tips that we feel like are really helpful from our perspective because emily and i read a lot of essays and so we put these couple of hints together for you again you don't have to follow every single thing but when you're writing essays a lot of times our recommendation is keep two to three personal essays in your back pocket and you can utilize those essays for multiple scholarships so just make sure that when you are writing right that you are keeping it somewhat more specific stories but sometimes it's good to have a couple of general essays that way you can power through and submit them to as many um scholarship opportunities as possible so tip number one plan ahead in terms of like when is a good time to apply anytime however right now is the big scholarship season so depending on where you're applying to for these different scholarships you're going to want to time some of these things out at this point in time in your senior year you should have already started applying to actual colleges right now is the time that you're really thinking about the financial aid piece and thinking about making final decisions if you have not already made a final decision so when i say plan ahead i i say look at those deadlines for all of these specialty scholarships simpsons for example is february 1st for all of our specialty scholarships a lot of other schools are pretty similar on that for any private money typically i see the range being from december through the spring sometimes there's occasional ones available in the fall but i would say for the most part december through april is the big season for any of those private funds because most students commit or have committed by may 1st and that's kind of the generic deadline that we see most often number two be unique uh this is really hard i think for a lot of students because we are really inherently conditioned to not brag about ourselves and to you know blend in this is the one time i urge you to not do that i will urge you to really embrace the weird because that's going to set you apart from any other person that is applying for these scholarships and think about it there are probably hundreds or thousands of kids applying for scholarships depending on where you're applying if you're applying to a national scholarship very much expect that there's going to be thousands of people applying for those scholarships if you're applying to something locally it's probably going to be in the a few dozen students but still you want to make yourself stand out so think about what makes you unique and that can be a hard question to answer so i would recommend that you do is talk to your friends and super weird but honestly just ask them like what do they what do they like about you like what makes you you why do you like being my friend why do you like hanging out with me what makes me awesome because they're going to give you an honest answer they're your friends so that's going to be really helpful for you to kind of do some self awareness self actualization and understand what makes you you um and some of us have more self awareness than others but i highly encourage you to just kind of think about some of those things um you know don't emily and i see this a lot you know the generic essay uh where maybe you forget to remove a different school's name uh that happens sometimes or you've submitted again like the same essay to everybody um think about unique experiences that you've had in your life uh you know not every admissions counselor wants to read about the big game we might want to read about just some other stuff so think about things outside of school and outside of athletics that make you you i think the more that you can be personal and vulnerable and share about yourself the better that you will be number three try or do not try at all it is absolutely obvious when someone has just not made the effort in an essay you didn't spell check anything uh like there's just all sorts of errors uh again like you left a different school's name in there and you're applying to simpson college and the essay says something else it's just a sort of a turn off for admissions professionals to see that okay well i'm supposed to be giving you money uh but it doesn't look like you put a whole lot of effort into this so um if you aren't going to take the time and really work through what you're doing it's probably better that you just you just don't do it at all because it's it's not a good it's not a good look review and revise with multiple eyes this is so so important because if you're like me and you get writer's block sometimes um and you look at something that you've written over and over and over again you're never going to see the mistakes so i highly encourage you to um have a parent or if you have a trusted professor or a friend that can review these essays for you that's going to be really helpful also messaging is really important so if you're writing something and you know i don't know when i write something i think everything i write is great uh but someone else might not think that and so it's really helpful to have a friend or someone else look it over and say now the tone of this is a little weird what if you try this it's really helpful to have multiple people check it out which is why it's really important to plan ahead because it's really hard to have someone look it over when the deadline is tomorrow and you're doing the essay tonight so again plan ahead know when you've got to get some stuff done and and be organized when you are organized track what you're doing with these essays so utilize an excel sheet or a google doc and make sure that you're keeping track of all the deadlines give yourself a task list make sure you're checking in with yourself kind of on like a weekly basis if not more frequently to figure out okay i need to submit essay x y z before february 1st or okay now i've submitted these essays i need to follow up with those people in two weeks whatever it might be uh just make sure that you have some sort of tracking tool to make sure that that that you're keeping yourself together and that you have set up alerts on your phone everyone's on their phone so just make sure you set up like little alerts alarms for yourself alerts on your calendar to check in on these things communicate with counselors nothing is worse for me and emily than when you don't return our texts or our phone calls um and i realize that probably a lot of people are communicating with you and i totally get that but if you want to go to a particular school you definitely want to communicate with the admissions counselors at that school because we are your biggest advocates we are the ones that are going to say this person deserves this scholarship they absolutely will fight for you but we gotta know you we gotta be able to know you if we're gonna be able to vouch for you so just make sure that you're communicating as much as in a reasonable amount right you don't you don't need to respond to every single thing although we would love that uh but please just be communicative and i'll just say this as a disclaimer if you know that you're no longer interested in a particular school let them know because then they'll stop calling you and it won't won't be a bother for you it won't be a bother for them it's not rude for you to say that just again open communication is key number seven follow up so i kind of already mentioned this already but if you have applied for specific scholarships um you know maybe in two to three weeks after you've applied follow up with the either the admissions counselor of that school if it's through an institution or follow up with the actual institution entity themselves so if it's a non-profit typically there's a point of contact on most applications you will see the point of contact with an email and a phone number so just keep track of that make sure you follow up with them and a follow-up can be a very quick email it doesn't have to be anything in depth you can say hi my name is so-and-so and i recently applied for one of your scholarships i just wanted to follow up and see where you're at in the process i really look forward to hearing from you have a great day it does not need to be anything deeper than that like they probably are getting tons of emails so something quick and short is good however following up makes you memorable because i'm gonna remember that i got an email from this specific person when i'm reading through the essays oh yeah that person emailed me it's just a nice way to again have get your name out there and continue to be in people's back of people's minds the last thing too is give thanks always be thankful because you relationships are everything in this world and you never know who you might run into in the future even if you don't end up attending a particular institution you never want to leave a bad taste in people's mouths because maybe in the future in your career you might have to work with some of these people or you might encounter them in another setting so you always want to be super gracious give thanks um you know when you do hear back from counselors or from other folks related to financial aid a thank you goes a long way politeness is everything these days especially when we live in today's world where politeness sometimes is not always at the forefront of every conversation okay i hate that we have to talk about this but i want you all to be super safe and protected when you are going through this information scams they are out there and it really makes me sad that that people want to take advantage of students but sometimes you know we can be a little naive that's okay it's okay to admit that but i just want to make sure that when you're looking for things that you're not falling into any kind of financial traps that you're not doing anything that you shouldn't these are a couple things that we've seen so if you encounter any kind of scholarship application any search engine any app on your phone related to scholarships and it has some of these things if it says like guaranteed or your money back um you're not going to be able to get this information anywhere else if it asks for a credit card or a bank account to hold your scholarship um basically anything that involves you giving money in order to get money that is a scam uh so just kind of be aware of your surroundings um you know we live in a day and age right where things are super accessible because of the internet and therefore so is your personal information and not just your own personal information but your parents personal information too um and as someone who knows several people who have had identity theft happen to them it is really hard to recover from identity theft so please be smart if you pop into something and it's asking you for any kind of personal information and it's not you're not getting an explanation from a real live person as to why you need to give that information bounce get out of there asap you do not need to that's that's not something that's for you it's more than likely a scam so again just want to make you aware of some of these things because sadly they do exist and we want you to be smart okay lastly i'm going to turn things over to emily just to kind of talk about some general resources for you because we just went over a whole ton of information and we want to make sure that if you are you do have questions about a variety of things that we've got the right resources for you so i'm going to turn it over to emily okay sorry it took me a minute to unbeat myself so all right so um just remember you know they're um first and foremost you're not in this alone and there are plenty of people that have gone through all of this before um you know i know maddie can attest to this and i can attest to this as well staying up late nights writing your essays having your parents read them all of that stuff we have definitely done so um not only are we your advocates but also you know people that are readily available to you first and foremost your high school guidance counselor i know all depending on the size of the size of the school that you went to um you know you could either be very close to your guidance counselor or you probably only see them once every every what once a semester probably right but regardless you know your guidance counselor is always going to be that first person that's really available to you to help you look over at essay or talk about an opportunity but just make sure that you are reaching out to them and also just to see what they know and how they can definitely help you network to capture some of that money that is out there for scholarships um some more public um areas are going to be like a college financial aid office so um with all of you being admitted at simpson and the majority of you um having your fafsa already filled out um you know we do have a team of really awesome professionals that are here to help you so if you have a question um you know if you want us to do some comparisons with other offers you may have gotten you can definitely always reach out um to our financial aid office as well as the financial aid offices of other colleges that you might be looking at specific to iowa students we have the iowa college student aid commission and also the iowa college access network these are um other other places that you can look not only for scholarship opportunities but for quick tips um tricks and also um you know what are some of the best ways to capitalize on securing the bag and making sure that you're getting you're maximizing all of your scholarship opportunities not to mention they also do have different courses on writing the perfect essay to you know going in for an interview because some scholarships will ask you to do things like that so those are all some really awesome resources that you can definitely utilize for students that are not from iowa i can guarantee your state has something similar you can either go to your high school counselor or you can actually talk to your simpson counselor for that um additional help and we can definitely help you with those things um as for the simpson contacts this is all of our contact information from our financial aid office uh myself and maddie luckily me and maddie actually sit right across the hall from one another so um if if i don't have an answer she has one and vice versa and also um you know our general office of admissions can definitely help you out as well we have some really awesome people that know a lot of a lot about a lot of different things and and kind of like what maddie has already said we do get a little sad when you guys don't text us back we understand you're busy but we want to help you and we want to be advocates for you usually around this time i know for myself i'm reading anywhere from 10 to 15 essays a week from students that i'm working with and it's probably one of the more rewar ing parts of our job as opposed to um it will in addition to you know you guys telling us that you've committed to simpson as well as seeing you guys walk around campus as simpsons students so make sure that you're definitely leveraging us because we're your advocates we're here for you and we want to make sure that again the simpson experience is an affordable one we have just done a huge knowledge jump on you and we want to make sure that we can help you with any kind of questions that you might have whether it's related to the content we just covered or related to something that maybe we didn't cover we are opening it up for q a yeah so um we did have one actually um and it's specific to students that are going to be transferring into simpson um can you specify if um oh wait a minute the websites that you mentioned are there scholarship opportunities for transfer students yes so you will definitely see on all the search engines that i labeled there are options most of the private stuff is not does not discern between first year and transfer most of the things that are applicable to transfer students tend to be uh college or university specific so those apps and those uh websites that i talked about you can apply for all of those if there are any requirements it will be on the actual application itself so you will see something that says this is for first year students only and there should be ways as well that you can narrow down your search in that search engine to focus on solely transfer i would make sure that you have several different search engines available so if you're going to search for something just for transfers make sure that's not your only search on that website because i don't want you to miss out on something that isn't specifically flagged for transfers because i would say a majority of the ones i've seen on there um you know are are applicable to all students so no issues there awesome um and other questions comes from gabriel um what about using fast web to search for scholarships yup that's another reputable source again there are tons of them available and out there um you know i will say i think just check with fastweb i know at one point they did have um different like levels so there's like a free one and then there's okay you can get access to more scholarships if you you know pay for the subscription it's up to you um so just kind of depends but i would say you know there's a lot of search engines available just make sure that you're using something that's right for you the ones that we labeled on here were the ones that we really feel are trusted and that we prefer just based on their user-friendly abilities but fast web is a common one that we see often so there's nothing wrong with it all right so this next one um i will go ahead and say it and then i'll answer it so it says um so when you are uh so when you say you are texting an email and emailing students what accounts or phone numbers are are you looking for to contact you so basically what that means is um at some point during the year you've probably received a text message from a 515 number saying um this is maddie or this is emily or this is dave or this is mark um and we're basically telling you that we're your admissions counselor um in that you know we need your high school transcript or you know we need your fafsa or congratulations on getting in i'm sending you an email and all of those great things so um when we say that you know sometimes you know students don't get back to us it's not because you guys don't want to 10 out of 10 times it's just because you're doing so much that you know um you don't have the time we only ask that you know you just keep our phone numbers and you utilize us as a resource when when when you need us basically um you know i've had students to where you know i have tried to contact them from september all the way up until december and then actually this past new year's so yeah i guess what a couple weeks ago i had a student call me at like nine o'clock in the morning on new year's eve and wanted to talk about scholarships in their application so you know definitely you know try and leverage us whenever you can sometimes you know if you can just shoot us a text back just let us know that you got it um and that you know you guys don't have any questions or anything like that and we'll still try and get in contact with you guys so um maddie did you have anything to add to that or do you want the next question no i think that's oh you all made really good points i i think the other aspect of just being in contact with with us is that if something happens right like you know in emergency cases um letting us know about those different things is really important too because um you know we've had in the past students where you know there's unfortunately been like a death in the family or you know just something has happened um unexpected life happens you're not never going to predict what's going to happen tomorrow however if you feel that there's something you know happening where it's a situation that would maybe impact your financial situation um you know or even just like your well-being let us know that way we can support you the best way you know that we can and that's regardless of you know if you're coming to simpson or not emily and i both want you know what's best for all of you so that's a good reason to kind of have those that relationship with your admissions counselor is just they're going to be able again to help you in those kinds of situations and there might be resources available to you that you didn't even realize were possible like we have simpson has special circumstances for example especially in a year like covid where it's had such a vast impact on families and their incomes there's a lot of special circumstance things that could help you um with some either loan forgiveness or in lowering your tuition costs so just be sure that you're you're keeping us in the loop and and making sure that we know what's going on with you absolutely all right so the next question is from corbin um for simpson music audition scholarships are those due by february 1st as well i think for music i think in general yes i know in the past that they have made you know exceptions yeah i mean it's um so in general i think they would like to get all of their auditions and things done by the deadline um and i think everything is labeled as february first however again if something comes up and you can't get the audition in in the next two weeks we'll we'll make accommodations for you we're never going to be like no well you missed that date so too bad for you it's just really to make sure we're keeping ourselves organized as a college um again but if it's been several months you're reaching out to us in april and saying hey i want to apply for this you may have missed the boat on that one so uh you know within reason for sure try to get it in by the deadline obviously but we can help you figure some things out if you need it yeah and corbin we will also um have your counselor reach out to you for some more information about that so i went ahead and i i made a note for you um and then the last question that we have so far is from gracie um how many scholarships do you recommend doing per week i would say okay first and foremost um make sure that you have a good handle on your schedule um we don't want you to burn out okay so i would say you know especially now that you know you guys are getting back in school and some of you guys are virtual and some of you guys are hybrid and all of those great things make sure that you know you have a good bead on your schoolwork um extracurriculars and things like that um and then really decide um how many scholarships you want to work on i would say um you know just to keep it light and keep it cute probably two a week um and that's just making sure that you're putting forth your best effort on those two scholarships um you know if you're doing five and six a week i would say that you know you do kind of have that have a higher factor of getting burnout i think doing two a week and making sure that not only are your essays on point your recommendations are are good and everything like that but also that you're putting your best foot forward and that that's showing through that essay or that interview um that you're doing at that time what do you think maddie yeah i think it's a personal preference right like you know some of us are really huge go-getters and are you know willing to just really knock a ton of stuff out and some of us are super busy and there's other stuff going on and so you need a more manageable number there's no right or wrong answer to how many um you should be doing it is again your own personal preference and knowing your boundaries and limits however i would say a good practice is to get yourself in a schedule so maybe on like a saturday or a sunday every saturday or sunday pick a day set aside two hours for yourself where you know every single day on that day so if you pick sundays for example from noon to two every sunday from noon to two that's your dedicated time to work on these scholarships and different things that will kind of help you manage it a little bit more again you can check in with yourself more often than not but as long as you know you have kind of a set date with yourself that's always really helpful to kind of keep things together as well i had a question asked uh just to me but i think it's really relevant to everybody so i had someone ask how much can coaches if you're an athlete help you to get more financial aid and this is a super great question it can be complex depending on the institution i would say again the more relationships you have with a particular college the better because the coaches are going to be an advocate for you as well however coaches have do not have a final say or dictate the financial aid the financial aid department is the are the people that get to decide yes this is we're going to be able to give them more money or not um but if you are working with a particular coach um obviously communicating with them is going to be really helpful for you uh just like emily and i said hey it'd be great if you would communicate with with us with your counselors the same can be said for coaches um i will say that simpson college for example uh because of our conference we do not give out or award any athletic scholarships that is not the same for every college it depends on the league that you're in and the conference that you're in so some colleges are able to award students based on their athletic performance simpson is not and those are roles that we do not control so that's not something you have to necessarily worry about with us however um coaches can always advocate for you and we're always in communications pretty much on a daily basis so okay great question so someone asked if by chance you earn more in scholarships than you need for one year can it be applied towards your total for the next year that would be amazing if you got more scholarships and did not have tuition for the year um preach proud proud of you if that's what applies to you um it will depend on the specific donor like where you're getting the money from because some applications say it has to be used within the specific school year so i can't give you a general answer on that because it is really specific based on who you're getting the money from i would say if there are specific scholarships where they don't have a limit you know maybe you want to utilize that for living expenses or for um you know something else um so i don't necessarily think you could roll it over to the next tuition year and i will say most scholarships that are private are annual so you have to reapply every single year whereas like if you get money from an institution that tends to happen you tend to get that scholarship all four years so like simpson that's kind of how our programming is with any of our specialty scholarships if you are involved in that program all four years you're going to have that scholarship all four years whereas the private scholarships you have to apply every single year so that's kind of the catch-22 with the private scholarships because it's a little bit more work but it's worth it to not have debt so i actually appreciate you for asking that question because um it's really great i think a lot of people don't think about that so um i think my general answer is probably no i don't think you'd be able to roll it over but again check with the specifics on the requirements for those scholarships because they definitely will have fine print that will tell you what you can and cannot use it for good question yep all right i do not have any more questions in the chat perfect all right well thank you all so much for tuning in tonight we really appreciate you engaging with us and hopefully this was really helpful for you um again stay connected with us we're going to have some more sessions throughout the end of this year and we're really looking forward to seeing you all join us on campus next year and being a part of the storm family uh as always you can chat with emily and i any time we've got our contact info right here so feel free to reach out to us and we are happy to chat and help you any way we can night everybody all right good night guys have a great one thank you