#raiseme

We are working on getting four kids in colleges next year. You can believe that we are searching every avenue for earning college funds.

After pouring over hundreds of articles and websites I am seeing a pattern on places where there is the highest amount of scholarship money available to students. STEM is the hot topic in education and there are college dollars to back up the push for STEM…

This article is about how students graduating from high school can earn money without a job.  According to the article by Parija Kavilanz, she writes about how a particular high school student named Abby Saxastar made $80K with the business startup Raise.me. The students earn money based on their academic achievements and their volunteer experiences and use it for a scholarship.  Since Abby was able to keep her GPA high and volunteered a lot, she was able to earn enough to pay for her tuition at a private college in Florida.  It is interesting because she was able to include information from her freshman, sophomore, and junior year in high school. According to Kavilanz, since launching in August 2014, the start-up receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Facebook.  According to the article, even though the website doesn’t target a specific demographic, it seems as if there is a higher amount of low-income families and students who use Raise.me.  

I think this start-up is a great way for families to find an easier way to pay for college.  As a child, I was rewarded with money if I got on the honor roll or principals list, which was a great motivator for me.  It is nice that there are foundations and companies that want to help America’s students pay for the expensive tuition colleges have.  It gives high schools a chance to also make college a more realistic future for students who believe they can’t do it.  Also growing up, my family considered going to school and excelling in courses as a job because as students, school comes first.  This website provides that for students.  I find it shady as to how Raise.me can verify if the students are telling the truth or not.  I checked out the website and I would need to sign up for it, it seems as if there is a trial period then they would have to pay if they wanted to continue using the services.  Only certain universities or colleges actually will accept the money because it just started. I think that limits these students to going to their “dream college” because it may not be on the list. This also give schools a high chance of getting more students though because they are partnered with the essentially free company.  

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