How To Protect Students From Scholarship Scams 1
Your Presenters Jacob Brooks Sean Geddis Solutions Consultant Regional Director 2
Today’s Agenda ✛ The role scholarships play in funding students’ education ✛ Problems with scholarship management & external scholarships ✛ Vetting external scholarships to prevent scams ✛ ScholarshipUniverse demonstration ✛ Questions & Answers 3
1 The Role Of Scholarships In Students’ Education 4
It’s All About Access ✛ 75% of students have unmet need ✛ Federal aid dollars aren’t keeping up with the rising costs of higher education ✛ Students need to supplement their education with additional money ✛ Scholarships are crucial to closing funding gaps ✛ Students expect an easy, mobile scholarship experience 5
Scholarships Play a Big Role How much importance does your school place on scholarships? 58% $500 65% the # of students who the amount of scholarship of schools lack automated want help finding that can influence where a scholarship mgt or don’t scholarships student enrolls. know what they have. Tyton Partners Finding a Fit: The Evolution of Ruffalo Noel Levitz: 2018 National Freshman Learning House: Online College Students 2016 Motivation to Complete College Report, 2018 Student-Centered Financial Aid, 2017 6
"As a student for the first time applying, having never applied for a scholarship before, it was difficult to understand what they were asking for." 7
"It's very frustrating to not be able to find anything, especially when you're scrolling through thousands and thousands of scholarships and you have to click on every. Single. One." 8
"There were a lot out there, but not a lot that applied to me.” 9
2 Problems With Scholarship Management & External Scholarships 10
Scholarship Management Today 11
Dangers Of External Scholarships Scholarship Red Flags ✛ Fees associated with an application ✛ Offers a ‘guaranteed win’ ✛ Asks for banking or personal identifiers like SSN or passport info ✛ Related to controlled substances, vaping, or smoking 12
Scam Example: Vaping 13
3 How We Prevent Scholarship Scams 14
20% Scholarship Scams 15
“There are definitely some things that are a ‘hard no’ for us. For example, you’ll never see scholarships in our system that have fees associated with an application , scholarships that offer a ‘ guaranteed win ,’ or that ask for banking or personal identifiers like social security number or passport information .” 16
The Scholarship Vetting Process Initial Vetting Learn about scholarship provider, the application, and any promotional materials. Look for red flags — associated 1 fees, guaranteed win, PII request. Detailed Vetting Searches to identify inconsistencies like: grammatical errors, unprofessional presentation, invalid contact info, 2 requirements for social sharing. Annual Review If a scholarship passes the vetting process, it is available in the ScholarshipUniverse database. It will be reviewed 3 annually to ensure it still meets our standards. 17
Scholarship Vetting Checklist Scholarship Vetting Checklist *If you check three or more criteria, the scholarship is considered illegitimate Criteria Checkbox Blog site Grammatical inconsistencies or unprofessional language Requires sharing on social media for ‘likes’ Invalid or out-of-country phone number or email No previous winners Requires applicants to come up with solutions to a hypothetical legal or business scenario or create a new product that otherwise would be considered intellectual property No contact information URL does not match company name (search WHOis.net) Wire transfer to student Requires student to send detailed financial or tax information to an unsecured email Address given does not match with business 18
One Scholarship Collection ✛ One source for Vetted, External institutional and external Scholarships scholarships ✛ Fully vetted and One Scholarship maintained external Collection scholarships ✛ All indexed in the matching engine Institutional Scholarships 19
DEMO Ready To Make It All Easier? 20
The Only Student Financial Services Platform 21
ScholarshipUniverse Customers 22
Questions? 23
Thank You! 24
APPENDIX 25
No One is Getting What They Need Students Schools = ✛ Students can’t find scholarships to ✛ Decreased college accessibiity pay for school = ✛ Fewer students use the institutional ✛ Lower scholarship fund utilization funds you have = ✛ External scholarship opportunities ✛ Dependence on institutional funding are a black hole = ✛ Students need more money to stay ✛ Lower student retention in school = ✛ Students take on higher debt ✛ Higher student borrowing 26
Streamline Scholarship Awarding Configurable settings and Committee management enables permissions let you decide what institutions to spread applications across reviewers see and prevent unintentional reviewers for fair and efficient, paperless bias in decisions. review. Multiple rounds of review are SmartRank uses configurable ranking automated so committees can spend more rules defined by each committee to time reviewing and less time coordinating. automatically rank applicants. Blind- & Double-Blind Review Easy integration with CL Connect capabilities manage anonymity and access simplifies integration with SIS and to information for committee members. advancement systems. 27
Meet ScholarshipUniverse Complete Scholarship Management ✛ Increase college accessibility by closing student funding gaps ✛ Improve scholarship fund utilization with better visibility and management ✛ Bring in outside funds with vetted external scholarship database ✛ Retain more students with ongoing scholarship funding options ✛ Reduce student borrowing with less dependence on loans 28
Adaptive Matching Engine ✛ Adaptive matching P engine learns from Coca-Cola First Generation student’s answers Scholarship ✓ First in family to attend college ✛ Interviews students by ✓ Demonstrated asking questions that unmet, financial need change based on each ✓ Minimum GPA of 3.0 answer ✓ College freshman ✛ Identifies highly relevant scholarship matches 29
Complete Scholarship Management MATCH APPLY Digital, mobile scholarship management keeps students engaged ✛ One source for institutional and vetted external scholarships gives ✛ students greater funding opportunities Adaptive matching engine guides each student to highly relevant ✛ scholarships Student cockpit allows students to manage scholarship opportunities ✛ from a single portal Automated alerts inform students when new matches are found ✛ 30
Complete Scholarship Management REVIEW AWARD Flexible workflow simplifies scholarship management across ✛ colleges, departments, and foundations Efficient, paperless review enables seamless application review by ✛ multiple people across campus Configurable ranking rules can be defined by each committee to ✛ automatically rank applications Automated alerts and follow-up communications keep students ✛ and staff on-task SIS integration utilizes student data throughout the scholarship ✛ process to save time and ensure accuracy 31
The University of Arizona 70% of UA Students Use ScholarshipUniverse, Borrowing Less ✛ Increased accessibility with centralized scholarship management for 1,400 institutional and 3,500 external scholarships “We improved accessibility to ✛ Improved scholarship fund utilization with streamlined education, reduced management of funds and scholarship matching for students the amount some UA ✛ Brought in $6M in external funding to UA students through students owed, and provided the best vetted external scholarship database student experience.” ✛ Improved student retention by alerting students to new, relevant scholarships (20,000+ daily views during peak season) — Rebekah Salcedo, Director of UA’s Office of Scholarships and ✛ Reduced student borrowing by making scholarship Financial Aid management easy, mobile, and personalized 32
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